


The Ex-President

by Aphelionite



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-01-19 20:41:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 28,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1483174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aphelionite/pseuds/Aphelionite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura holes up aboard Galactica after losing the election to Baltar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries

And look upon myself and curse my fate"

~ William Shakespeare ~

 

Chapter I

Laura could tell by the look on Admiral Adama's face that his meeting with President Baltar had not gone well. President Baltar: no two words strung together had ever made her as sick as those. The only thing Baltar was fit to be president of was his own fan club. Now was not the time to say such things however, standing on the hangar deck of Colonial One surrounded by her former security and staff trying to give the impression that she was stepping aside gracefully. She might have preferred slinking off the ship quietly but she wasn't about to give Baltar the added satisfaction. She was going to thank her people for their loyal service over the last ten months and then she was going to walk out of here with her chin up. She hoped.

'It's been an honour, ma'am,' said Stoker, one of her guard, holding her hand as he spoke. 'You know we all voted for you. Except Maurice (who was conspicuous by his absence), but we're gonna put him out an airlock later.'

She smiled and almost meant it, 'I appreciate the sentiment, Michael.'

'Anytime,' he smiled, reluctantly letting her go.

She looked around at the others. Bill was doing his best to blend into the background, to give her this moment with her people. 'I know it might be tempting to let Baltar fend for himself,' there were a few furtive looks exchanged and a less subtle 'hell yeah' coughed out from somewhere, 'but I hope you will continue to do your jobs as well for him as you have for me, because it's the people you serve and you make a difference in this fleet every day.' Not that it would be a fleet for much longer.

'We'll see you back here before long, ma'am,' called Lawrence from the back and there were echoes of agreement.

'If you ever need anything, ma'am,' said Daria, one of her junior aides, looking slightly tearful.

'I'll let you know. Thank you, all,' she said, her gaze sweeping the small group of dependable colleagues one last time. She had made her official goodbyes to the entire staff of Colonial One before Baltar's inauguration but the people around her now were the ones who cared enough to want to give their personal condolences over the election and best wishes for the future, whatever that might hold. The only person missing was Laura's chief aide, Tory Foster, for the simple reason that she had preceded Roslin off the ship, moving to the Zephyr the day before. Swallowing down the lump in her throat, Laura said, 'I wish you all the best of luck.' And she sincerely meant it. They were probably going to need it.

Bill came forward and her hand was cold in his as he helped her onto the wing of the raptor. He alone heard the shaky breath she took as the door closed. Racetrack and Skulls were piloting and both kept their eyes front out of respect for their passengers.

Laura felt numb leaving Colonial One, leaving almost everyone she knew behind, her nine year political career at an abrupt and unforeseeable end, but then, when did she ever see it coming? 'He's going ahead with the settlement, isn't he?' she asked at last, though Bill's face on the hangar deck had said it all.

'Yes.'

It was a very quiet ride back to Galactica.

'I've put you in quarters on F-Deck. They used to be officer's quarter's so you won't have to share,' Bill explained, as he led Laura off the port hangar deck, the largest of her luggage bags slung over his shoulder. She nodded mutely, barely acknowledging the people they passed. More than half of the fleet had voted for Baltar and, though she had fared slightly better aboard Galactica than Baltar in the polls, the guilty looks and quickly averted gazes were ill-disguised as she walked up the corridor. Here were some of the morons who had chosen fiction over reality and succeeded in deposing her, but they were not the only ones who would suffer for it, she was sure of that.

She was still stewing in these uncharitable thoughts when she realised that they had arrived at her new home. The room resembled the inside of a metal cargo container more than anything else, utterly devoid of character, charm, windows. In the living area there was a desk, a wardrobe and a small blue two-seater sofa that reminded her of the one she had slept on aboard Colonial One. From what she could see there was a bathroom but it didn't appear to have a shower, only a toilet and sink. Looked like she'd have to get used to communal showering.

'Home, sweet home,' she said wryly, letting her bags slump to the floor just inside the hatchway and suddenly feeling extraordinarily miserable at the thought of spending day after day gazing at nothing but these barren walls and her own navel.

To her horror she felt tears welling up and hurriedly turned away, hoping Bill hadn't noticed. To her shame he decided not to be accommodatingly oblivious to her distress. She felt his comforting hand on her shoulder but shied away from it, reaching down to pick up a bag and wiping her eyes in the process. 'I'm fine. I should unpack,' she said, not looking at him as she hoisted the bag onto the bed, blindly pulling out clothes.

There was a long moment of silence in which Laura both feared and craved to feel his hand on her shoulder again but, finally, he simply said, 'You know where to find me.'

She nodded, not trusting her voice as more tears glided down her cheeks, staying bent over the bag until she heard the hatch close behind him, when she sobbed and sank down onto the bed, wrapping her arms around herself.

Baltar was president. Baltar, the man who had at best fraternised with the cylons and at worst colluded in the genocide of Mankind; Baltar, whose nuclear bomb had somehow ended up aboard Cloud Nine; Baltar, who sought power not to make a difference to the people but to take it from her because she had wounded his ego; Baltar, who had his head so far up his own ass it was a wonder he wasn't constantly crashing into things. This was the man who had beaten her in a free and democratic election. This was who the people had chosen. Not to mention Vice-President Zarek, the convicted terrorist, who was no doubt getting his fair share of enjoyment from her removal, too.

And now both were tied to the promise that had won them the election: settlement on a planet that was far from ideal for the short-term and insufficiently endowed to support them in the long-term. They couldn't live on dreams alone as Baltar and Zarek had connived to convince the people and Baltar had proven time and again as vice-president that the responsibilities of leadership held little interest for him. Life on 'New Caprica' (ha!) would be hard to manage for someone competent. Where would they be when the novelty wore off for Baltar? When his shiny new sceptre lost its gleam?

But that wasn't her problem anymore was it? The people had chosen and Baltar was the guy for them. Never mind that she had scooped most of them out of the void after the attacks, never mind that she had kept them alive this long, never mind any of that because she had had the gall to tell them the truth rather than what they wanted to hear and nobody wanted to hear that they couldn't have their old lives back right now. They looked at their children and dreamed of open spaces for them to run around in, she got that, she did, but Laura was afraid for her people, deeply afraid, and knowing that they chose their own fates didn't make it any easier to watch them settle on this gods-forsaken planet, knowing the endeavour was doomed from the first.

And, knowing this, she had let Baltar win the election, she had let Bill convince her that she wouldn't be able to live with it but now she was having second thoughts. Second, third, fourth. Shouldn't she have saved the people from their own ignorance? Shouldn't she have done anything to stop Baltar and Zarek from coming to power? Hadn't that been why she'd been sent the vision of Baltar when she was dying? So that she would know how critical it was to protect the people from him? Just a few weeks ago she'd been so sure she had this election in the bag and now, here she was, flat on her face with the rug pulled out from under her.

What was shegoing to do now? In the last ten months she'd gone from Secretary of Education to President of the Colonies, from terminal breast-cancer to miracle cure, from wallflower to girl-power and she felt as if she'd just stepped off a fairground ride, dizzy with all the things she hadn't had time to think about until now. She hardly even recognised herself anymore.

How could she possibly know what she was going to do next?

She pushed the bag off her bed and lay down on the bare mattress, hoping that sleep and obliviousness would come quickly, and that she would wake to find out this had all been a nightmare.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter II

Bill wasn't sure if he was taking his life into his own hands or not. He had contemplated delegating the task to Starbuck or Tigh, those in his crew with the thickest skin, but in the end he'd come to the conclusion that if things went south the consequences should land on his head alone. He'd sent his officers on dangerous missions before but this one could be particularly unpleasant for everyone involved. No, this one was his to shoulder - not that he hadn't had a little help with the rewiring from Dee. Wouldn't want to wake the entire ship, now.

He was leaning against a bulkhead in corridor five on F-Deck watching a certain hatchway. He glanced at his watch, waiting. The other crewmen in the corridor shared a small smile at the muffled start-up of reveille suddenly sounding on the other side of the hatch, recognising it, no doubt, from basic training. Less than thirty seconds later an extremely disgruntled redhead all-but-staggered out into the corridor to find out what the frak the racket was. She spotted Bill opposite in his work-out clothes, saw the extra sweats in his hands, the calm, assured look on his face.

Then she saw red.

'What the hell is this?' Laura demanded, her voice deadly, tying her dressing-gown with strong jerks as if imagining the belt around his neck.

'The only way I've been able to get your attention in over a week,' he replied, standing up straight as she closed on him.

'Well you have it,' she assured him furiously. 'What?'

Suddenly Bill was having second thoughts about his oh-so-clever plan. He was glad to see her though, even if it was staggeringly obvious that the feeling wasn't mutual. Of course he knew that she'd been getting her meals regularly delivered to her quarters but he hadn't personally clapped eyes on her since the day she'd arrived aboard Galactica and that was a situation he just wasn't comfortable with. Now that she was standing in front of him, with dark circles under her eyes and less flesh on her bones than he remembered, he wondered if he shouldn't have made this house-call a little sooner.

'I'm worried about you,' he admitted, his quiet words almost drowned by the cacophony still issuing from her quarters.

'Concern noted,' she bit off, turning away.

'You can't just lock yourself away like this,' he called after her.

She stopped, swivelling back to face him and he thought he saw a couple of people pull about-turns out of the corner of his eye. 'Can't?' she repeated dangerously.

Ignoring the (obviously very well honed) self-preservation instincts that were telling him to run for his life Bill instead opted to close the gap between them. 'You can't let Baltar chase you into hiding like this, you're stronger than that, Laura. You're-'

'You don't know what the frak you're talking about,' she said, looking disgusted. 'You think you know me? We've known each other what, less than a year and you think you've got me all figured out? Well, I've got news for you, Admiral: you don't know shit.'

'Laura -' began Bill, taken aback at the contempt in her voice.

'Don't touch me,' she hissed, knocking his arm away. 'Don't call, don't write, just shut that frakking music off and leave me the hell alone.'

Bill flinched slightly as the hatch slammed shut behind her.

Should've gotten Saul to do it, he thought.

Where the hell did he get off telling her what she could and couldn't do? And what was with this frakking music? What was she? A frakking recruit? Probably thought he was pretty frakking clever, Laura fumed, prowling up and down the small room. Of course it didn't help that she had lain awake most of the night before (and every night since the election) and had barely been asleep half-an-hour when she'd been so rudely awoken. She had half a mind to find accommodation aboard another ship! But the mere thought of being lost out there amongst the crowds was enough to make her chest feel tight and she paused in her pacing, loosening her dressing-gown. Better to hide away in the belly of the whale than be regurgitated into that choppy sea of indifference.

The music wasn't stopping, in fact she was half-convinced it had gotten louder. She ought to go back out there and give him another piece of her mind. How difficult was it to figure out that she didn't want to see him? She didn't want to see anyone.

She didn't have to and she wasn't going to. Period. If Bill didn't like it, it was his own tough luck, he should have thought about that before he handed the presidency to Baltar. It was gratifying to blame Bill and, better still, it was easy. Even with this music ringing in her ears she felt some satisfaction at keeping him from getting his. The more wounded he looked the harder she wanted to kick him. He'd ruined everything, he could have covered it up safe in the knowledge that it was for the greater good, but no, that would make them criminals. Never mind that a cylon collaborator was now sitting in the presidential chair then, so long as they weren't criminals… and he'd had the temerity to use her as his excuse! She wouldn't be able to do it? she thought hysterically. She'd been doing it until he'd interfered.

Why hadn't he just looked the other way?

Her own uselessness was like the constant taste of vomit in the back of her mouth, bitter and unrelenting. She'd tried telling herself that she'd been through worse, hell, losing her job was nothing compared to losing most of humanity but fear of losing the rest shattered any perspective she might have otherwise gained.

Meanwhile the wireless rang with Baltar's praises for every day that passed without a cylon sighting - as if he had anything to do with that - and for the first time in her life Laura found herself wishing the cylons would attack because then Baltar's assertion that the nebula could hide them indefinitely would disintegrate and they wouldn't be able to go ahead with the settlement. How far the mighty had fallen.

The music finally stopped after half an hour and there was a knock so soon after that she wondered how long they'd been standing out there. It was a crewman with a breakfast tray, much earlier than she usually took it, which she would have found suspicious had her brain not been addled by sleep-deprivation. She poured herself a welcome cup of coffee after he'd departed, noticing a folded piece of paper on the tray. She recognised the handwriting the moment she opened it.

Same time tomorrow. Bill.

Son of a bitch.

Laura hurled the tray against the wall in an unwonted fit of pique, not only making a tremendous mess of her room but getting caught by the backsplash herself, which only made her madder and she kicked the door of the metal wardrobe, too, with an inarticulate shout of what could only be termed rage. She raged against Bill for having lost nothing, she raged against Baltar and Zarek for having gained everything, she raged against the gods and Fate for ever having placed the future of humanity in her hands, but most of all she raged against herself because she should have begged, pleaded with Bill to help her - and maybe he would even have done it. Perhaps it had been within her power to stop all of this…

And she had failed.

She raged because right now her rage might very well be the only thing holding her together and she desperately needed something to hold onto.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter III

Three more days of solitude had done nothing to help Laura's mood. She was trying her best to control her temper after 'accidentally' upsetting a tray over the boy who brought her meals yesterday but That Frakking Music (as she so endearingly termed it) had a way of lighting her fuse and her fuse was not a long one of late so the potential for another blow-up was high. She hadn't seen Bill again but she knew he was out there, waiting for her to give up.

'Fat chance,' she muttered to herself, eyeing the offending speakers positioned so inconveniently near the ceiling for the millionth time, as if her glare could melt the electronics within. It was days like this that she wished she owned a sidearm, perhaps the kind with the exploding bullets, then she could just shoot the frakking speakers. Somehow she didn't think Bill would lend her one though, even if he didn't know what she intended to use it for - especially if he didn't know what she intended to use it for. Well, she had to give him credit for some sense. Not much though, when she thought about Sharon imprisoned in the bowels of the ship.

She began to examine the wall beneath instead, the wads of tissue she'd wedged into her ears doing nothing to attenuate the music (and by extension her annoyance) as she felt around the edges of the panels for one that would come away. Really, how hard could it be to find the wire leading to the speakers and just yank it out?

It may not have been the soundest of logic but after four days of being woken so unpleasantly - at five-thirty in the morning no less - she wasn't exactly at her most rational. In her mind beating the speakers was akin to beating Bill and the sure knowledge that this would (at least temporarily) stymie him only made it all the more desirable a goal. She was pissed off that her initial attack had failed so abysmally in attaining the desired outcome, namely, his backing off. Maybe if she showed him that she wasn't afraid to vandalise his ship when provoked, he would think twice.

She'd show him what she thought of his whole 'while you're staying under my roof' attitude. She managed to prise off a panel at torso height and bent to peer inside the shadowy, hollow bulkhead. Ah. The thick mass of wires inside was daunting just to look at let alone with any intention to interfere with them. Okay, maybe if she…

She began to separate the wires, giving each one an experimental tug and listening to see if she could hear it's termination point in the room. She found a couple of blue wires that sounded promising and seemed to lead in the direction of the speakers but upon giving them a good solid yank found that they were more securely fastened than she'd first anticipated. She gave it a few tries, at one point wrapping the wires around her hand, bracing her foot against the wall and tugging so furiously that had they actually given way she probably would have hit the opposite wall, but to no avail. Brute strength wasn't going to do it.

Changing tack, she reached for the large pair of scissors she'd used to pry the panel off. The wires weren't that thick, the heavy metal shears should work, she thought, closing the sharp jaws on the blue plastic coating. At that moment a five year old could have told her that what she was about to do was unwise but Laura, in her sleep-deprived and antagonised state, didn't realise it till there was a loud SNAP and she was pitched to the floor, whilst the room was pitched into absolute darkness.

She lay stunned for several long moments, wondering if the lights had gone out or hers had. One thing was for sure, she had not cut the wire to the speakers for even now, as she lay dazed and aching on the floor, that frakking music blared on. She moaned pathetically, her right hand throbbing painfully, nor was the back of her head feeling too pretty.

'That was really stupid,' she groaned out loud, touching her head as she gingerly sat up, already able to feel the beginnings of a lump. She felt sick.

Her first instinct was to try to find the hatch to let some light into the room but then she remembered that Bill was out there and she really didn't want to have to explain this one so she waited until a good fifteen minutes after the music had stopped before sneaking out of her quarters to visit sickbay. By this time her hand was stinging something awful, though the nausea at least had abated.

'What brings you down here at this unholy hour?' said Doctor Cottle, who was in his office, to which Laura had been directed by a bored looking nurse.

'Little accident,' she said, stopping just short of the thin aura of smoke drifting around the white-haired physician's head and holding out her hand.

'Looks like a burn,' he said, dropping his cigarette into a kidney bowl on his desk and getting up so he could examine it.

'Excellent deduction, doc,' she said, flinching then glowering when he probed closer to the wound. He turned her hand over.

'Looks like you got zapped. How did you manage that?' he asked, indicating for her to follow him over to a treatment area.

'Bad wiring,' she said.

He patted the bed, 'You fall?'

'I didn't fall, I was thrown,' she said grimly, rubbing the back of her head.

Cottle frowned, 'You feel nauseous?' he asked, pulling out a pocket-light and shining it into her eyes, his hand under her chin.

'Not anymore.'

His frown deepened at that. 'How long did it take you to get down here?'

'I'm not sure, thirty minutes maybe.'

'Did you lose consciousness?' he asked, holding up a finger and moving it back and forth across her field of vision.

'I don't think so.'

'You don't think so?' he repeated, eyebrows raised.

Laura got irked. 'I don't know! Does it really matter? Just patch me up so I can get the hell out of here,' she snapped.

'You're right, I suppose all these time-wasting little tests don'tmatter - unless you wanna wake up tomorrow, that is. You could have a concussion.'

'Just spare me the lack of a bedside manner,' she begged sarcastically.

'Somebody woke up on the surly side of the bed,' he noted.

Laura did not seem to appreciate his patronising tone. 'Well, you try being electrocuted first thing in the morning and see how cheery you are. I'd be happy to apply the paddles.'

'Is snapping at me making you feel better?' he asked, thinking that at least that way it was serving a purpose as he felt the back of her skull. Laura didn't answer, turning her face away slightly when he returned his attention to her hand, cheeks flushed. 'Any loss of sensation in your fingers?'

'I had pins and needles for a little while.'

'Can you feel that?' he asked, pressing a needle to the pads of her fingers one at a time.

'Yes,' she said five times over, the last drawn out into a sibilant sigh of renewed impatience.

'Doesn't appear to be any permanent damage,' he pronounced, turning to hunt down a tube of ointment and some dressings from the shelves behind him. 'Won't take a minute to dress.'

He partially used the time to observe her, noting the tired circles under her eyes, the peaky colouring and brief lapses into melancholia when she thought he wasn't paying attention. Tempted as he was to say something he could already guess how she would react to unsolicited advice.

'How have you been sleeping?'

'Mostly on my side, little bit on my stomach,' she answered flippantly.

'Funny,' he said, winding a gauzy bandage round her hand.

'I thought so.'

'Like hell.' he muttered. He might have pushed her but what was the point when she obviously didn't intend to be forthcoming? If anyone knew how to dissemble, it was a politician and experience had taught him that this one in particular was as stubborn as a mule when it came to her health. 'All done,' he said, taping down the end of the bandage. 'Take these with you,' he said, handing her the tube and spare dressings. 'How's your head?'

'Sore,' she said, rolling her eyes at what she viewed to be an inane question.

He found her a bottle of painkillers. 'Two every six hours.' She nodded once, sliding off the bed. 'Just do me a favour,' he said before she left. 'Take better care of yourself. And eat a decent meal for frak's sake.'


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter IV

The first job on Cally Henderson's itinerary this afternoon was a repair up on F-Deck. Laura Roslin had reported a problem with her lights first thing this morning and, though she wasn't president anymore, the Chief thought it wise to respond sooner rather than later. Cally didn't mind, it made a change from the exhaustive maintenance they'd been performing on the old Battlestar - not much of a change, but a change that got her out of Galactica's oily innards all the same. Though perhaps she shouldn't be so quick to complain: half the deck-gang had been out patching up civvie ships since the Cloud 9 disaster and they never stopped bitching about it. Cally, however, had little sympathy. It couldn't get any worse than the time she'd been sent over to the Astral Queen, the prison ship, and ended up biting off a man's ear, and getting shot for it. Now that was a shitty assignment. Short of someone coming back less a limb, she was unimpressed by their trials and tribulations.

'Maintenance request?' she said brightly when the hatch swung open, though her smile faded a little at the answering grimace of annoyance. She got the impression that this was more due to her chipper demeanour than her presence in and of itself though.

'It's over here,' said Roslin and Cally stepped inside, putting down her tool-box to examine the damage. The candlelight, whilst romantic, didn't provide nearly enough light and she pulled her torch out of her belt to make up the difference. 'The blue ones,' said Laura needlessly, for Cally could see the severed wires for herself.

'Did you try to fix this yourself?' asked Cally, surprised to find the panel open and suddenly noticing Roslin's bandaged hand.

'I was trying to fix something,' said Laura evasively, sitting down on the unmade bunk, one leg tucked up under her. Cally spotted the blankets and pillow on the sofa and wondered for a moment if she'd been sleeping there. It looked like it - but why would she, when she had a perfectly good bunk? 'How long is this going to take?'

Cally shrugged easily, 'Not long. Just need to strip back the wires and patch them. I'm gonna have to cut main power to this section first though.'

'In your own time,' she said, though it somehow sounded more like 'Why weren't you finished five minutes ago?'

'I have to get authorisation to shut off the power,' Cally explained, hastily pulling the phone from the wall. If the rumours were true and the ex-president was not in full possession of the plot at present, she didn't fancy hanging around.

She surreptitiously glanced around, looking for signs of scattered marbles in Roslin's quarters while she waited for someone to find the chief. There wasn't a single defaced picture of Baltar on the walls, no dartboard with his face for a target, no evidence but her slightly frayed appearance that she might have let things go to pot since arriving aboard Galactica. She'd even go so far as to say Roslin's quarters were, well, boring. She appeared to have made no attempt to personalise the place but it was neat and clean, nothing psychotic so far as she could see. She finally desisted in her amateur surveillance attempts when Laura seemed to grow suspicious of her interest.

Permission to shut off the power was quickly granted once Chief Tyrol had been tracked down and Cally headed down the corridor to the switch-box, plunging thirty metres of corridor and the rooms lining it into partial or total darkness. A habitant of one of these rooms soon stuck his head out to see what was going on.

'Just effecting a minor repair, sir. Power will be restored in about ten minutes,' she said to the man she vaguely recognised as a marine. He nodded and disappeared again.

Another voice stopped her dead before she was halfway back to Roslin's room. 'Specialist Henderson.'

Frak. 'Yes sir,' she snapped, turning to address the admiral, whose quarters also happened to be within the temporary blackout zone, not that she'd expected him to be there at this time of day.

'What's the problem?' he asked, tucking his glasses into his breast-pocket.

'Just a couple of busted wires, sir. I'll have it fixed in no time.'

'What do you mean 'busted wires'?' he asked.

Cally rubbed her neck uncomfortably, having figured out that Roslin was responsible but not liking to say as much. She was a former president for frak's sake - and not just a little intimidating.

'Specialist?' demanded Adama.

She sighed, admitting, 'They look like they've been cut, sir.'

'Sabotage?' he asked, obviously not understanding her reticence to report such a thing, especially this close to the CIC.

'Not exactly, sir.'

The Admiral looked around again, noting the extent of the black-out and clearly asking himself what - or who - was located in this section. 'You've got to be kidding me,' he muttered darkly, heading straight for Roslin's room. Cally wasn't sure if she should follow or not till her dilemma was neatly solved by Adama's slamming of the hatch behind him. Moments later she could hear raised voices but not what they were saying. All she knew was that she wouldn't like to be in Roslin's shoes right now; the admiral sounded pissed.

'- could have killed yourself!'

'Right now, chance would be a fine thing!' Laura shot back, her head throbbing.

'This is not a frakking joke,' seethed Bill, furious with her not for the damage to his ship but the damage to herself, which she had waved in front of him just moments ago as proof that she had already been punished enough for her transgression. 'Of all the stupid, reckless - what the hell were you thinking?'

'Oh I don't know, what possible reason could I have for wanting to cut off the power to certain equipment in this room at five-thirty in the morning?' she snapped sarcastically.

'This has got to stop,' he said, voice at a more normal volume yet retaining its firmness.

'Precisely what I was thinking.'

'That's enough,' he warned her. 'I know you're having a hard time-'

'Oh give me a break,' she huffed, rolling her eyes.

'What do you think I'm trying to do?'

'I think you're trying to salve your own conscience,' she answered, though the question had been rhetorical.

'What am I supposed to feel guilty about?'

She hissed, turning away as if to say, 'You know exactly what you've done'.

'Say it,' he challenged. He wanted to hear her say it.

'You let Baltar and Zarek take the election!' she shouted, pivoting back to face him.

'Baltar and Zarek won the election, you mean,' he corrected her. She seemed to keep forgetting that bit.

'Settling on this planet is going to get us all killed,' she said with certitude.

'You don't know that.'

'Of course I know that,' she answered acerbically, clearly questioning her former estimation of his intelligence. 'You think the cylons have really stopped looking for us? "Sorry for destroying everything you held dear, have a nice life"? One day they're going to find us, Bill, it's only a matter of time and when that day comes you're going to look back and you're going to regret this - if you get the chance.' For an instant, only an instant, he saw the despair behind her condemnation of him and in that moment Bill realised the chokehold this possibility had on her.

'You think we're not already drawing up emergency evacuation plans? Doing everything we can to protect the people on the surface?'

'Protect?' she laughed incredulously, though there was no humour in her expression. 'You really think you could evacuate twenty or thirty thousand people in the time it would take for ten baseships to jump into orbit and nuke the settlement from space? You're out of your mind.'

'Sometimes you just have to do the best you can.'

'Well, the best you could have done was look the other frakking way!' she yelled, filled again with that bitter helplessness, wanting to hit him, smash that cool façade of certainty and shake the truth out of him: he didn't really believe any of that bullshit, in no possible reality was this going to be alright.

'It's over, Laura!'

'It wasn't 'over' when you decided I wasn't fit to be president. Funny how you had no problem having me arrested over a cylon raider but you're perfectly willing to stand by and watch Baltar and Zarek run this fleet right into the ground.'

'You want a repeat performance of what happened last time I declared martial law?' he answered and she could tell that whatever resolve was keeping him from laying into her was starting to crack.

'You never thought I was fit for the job, you couldn't wait to take over,' she knew that this was only half true but she couldn't seem to stop herself.

'Hey I wasn't the one who broke our agreement!'

Hook, line and sinker.

'So much for forgiveness…' she said softly. 'It's not quite what you bargained for at the time is it? I mean, I imagine it's easier to forgive someone you know is dying rather than someone you might have to live with.'

Bill looked stung. Laura had struck a nerve and though he believed his next words with every fibre of his being, they seemed to ring a little hollow with the blood thundering in his ears. 'I meant what I said back then. What is this? I thought we left all this behind on Kobol.'

'Admit it, you only forgave me because you felt sorry for me. You found out I had cancer and you felt bad for locking a sick woman up and you felt sorry for me. That's why you were so quick to forgive me.'

Laura seemed determined to mine the full potential of the nerve she'd found, whilst Bill found himself wondering how the hell had they gotten onto this. 'Trust me I'm not the kind of guy who forgives someone just 'cause they're dying.'

She surveyed him doubtfully. 'You're all heart, Bill. Ever since you got shot, you just can't help yourself. You can't just get on with it. You seem determined to go down in history as this great and good man but it won't matter what kind of man you were when there's nobody left to remember.'

'That's enough,' he ordered (and it was an order), looking so menacing for a moment that Laura actually obeyed. 'I'm done talking about this,' he stated unequivocally. 'Now you have three options and three options only - I'm doing the talking now,' he said, the moment she opened her mouth to protest. 'Option one: Agree to be outside that hatch at five-thirty tomorrow and I'll have Specialist Henderson come back in and complete your repairs. Option two: Don't agree. Sit here in the dark. I've got time.'

'And 'option'three?' she asked, folding her arms defensively.

'Leave,' he said. 'I don't want that but if you're so determined to do this, to let this thing eat you up, I'm not sure I want to watch that. I'm not sure I can.'

Laura looked down at the floor, struck temporarily speechless, trapped between what she believed to be an entirely justifiable desire to be alone and a vision of herself in a year's time, still locked in this room, hair wild, clothes stained, surrounded by presidential news clippings and raving about Baltar and Zarek and this frakking planet. Still raving, she corrected herself.

'I'm not asking for much, Laura,' said Bill softly, taking advantage of her momentary lapse into silence.

'And what are you asking for, exactly?' she questioned and he realised that he hadn't actually gotten around to telling her that part yet. Well, she hadn't given him much of a chance till now.

Laura barely slept at all that night; her conscience smote her. This in itself was not new, but the reason was. She'd gone too far with Bill earlier, said a lot of stupid hurtful things. She'd finally succeeded in making him feel just a little bit as bad as she did but she felt far from victorious as she lay in her bed reliving it. What had she been thinking? Dredging up the past, deliberately trying to hurt him. There was no excuse, none at all…

Which was why - unfortunately - she would be exactly where he'd told her to be the next morning. Not that she was going to tell Bill why. Let him think it was for want of working lights and a quiet life; she hadn't entirely forgiven him for successfully appealing to her better nature yet.


	5. Chapter 5

The Old Man wouldn't have pushed Roslin too hard this first time out, aware that while she had regained her health since her battle with cancer, having to endure a prolonged illness which had brought her to the brink of death had been debilitating. He had planned to build her fitness back up gently. Of course after the stunt she'd pulled with the wiring in her quarters (and assured by Cottle that yesterday's accident wouldn't affect her performance) he was more inclined to ride her like a drill sergeant and make her run till she dropped.

'Move that ass, Roslin!'

Laura looked daggers at him but had long ago run out of breath to curse him with. Her expression said it all though as she puffed her way along the walkway above the hangar deck, red in the face both from exertion and irritation as workers looked up at Bill's none-too-polite nor quiet encouragement. If she could talk, he'd be getting such a tongue-lashing right now.

Bill knew it and as long as she still had the energy to be glaring at him like that, she had the energy to run. If she'd been trying to piss him off, she'd succeeded - perhaps they should do a victory lap. He yelled at her for another two hundred yards, at which point he realised that his use of the word 'fat' in relation to her derriere had gotten no reaction at all and she was looking as if she had finally been run ragged if not repentant.

'Alright,' he relented, more than a little glad to be stopping himself. It had been getting more and more difficult to keep up his insults with proper conviction. Laura dropped down onto the first likely object she saw, gasping for breath and pushing sweaty tendrils of hair off her face. 'You need to keep moving or you'll seize up,' he warned, but Laura slowly shook her head once, clutching her side and holding up a finger to indicate that she might be capable of acquiescing in about a minute. Maybe.

After more like three she managed to haul herself to her feet again, still breathing hard as they began walking back towards their quarters and Bill could see that she was shaking with fatigue. She'd managed a little under a kilometer, which wasn't bad going considering. This was definitely as far as he dared push her for now though, he wasn't a sadist - contrary to what Laura was probably thinking about now.

'You - bastard,' she panted, the moment she regained the ability to do so. 'I'm seeing - frakking - spots,' she complained, holding her pony-tail away from the back of her neck and fanning the area with her hand.

'Suck it up,' he said mercilessly, 'You had it coming.'

Laura seemed to think about this for a moment before saying, hopefully, 'Will you stop the music now?'

'Nope,' he said. If he stopped the music she'd have no impetus to get out of bed in the morning.

Hope extinguished, her face fell back into lines of grim annoyance. 'I changed my mind: you're an asshole.'

'I feel like I should go check on Starbuck. You seem to be channelling her spirit.'

'She thinks you're an asshole, too?'

'You'd have to ask her, but when it comes to attitude problems yours is reaching new heights,' he muttered, rethinking that second lap.

'Maybe I'd have a better attitude if I wasn't being coerced into running halfway round the frakking ship at the crack of dawn,' she posited, not troubling to lower her voice as the traffic in the corridors began to increase.

Bill didn't say anything; he wasn't about to give her an excuse to start lambasting him in public and, devoid of a reaction, Laura managed to hold her tongue, though she gave him a withering look and disappeared into the bathroom the moment they reached his quarters. By the time she re-emerged nearly an hour later she was looking thoroughly relaxed whilst Bill had to hurry not to be late for work.

Their runs continued with varying success (depending on which side of the bed Laura woke up on each morning) but Bill quickly realised his error in picking an activity which basically ensured that no conversation could be had. Most mornings they barely exchanged more than five words and he often got the impression that Laura was just going through the motions and he was merely herding her through Galactica's endless corridors. Therefore his next challenge lay in trying to get her to stay for breakfast after her post-workout shower.

Something he succeeded at, much to his own surprise, after only a week of cajoling, where Laura spontaneously admitted, 'I don't know what to do.'

Bill looked across the table at her, her hair still wet, one leg pulled up so she could rest her chin on her knee. The grey sweats he'd picked out for her had fit her perfectly and he was now slightly worried that she might grow suspicious about just how much time he'd spent admiring her figure. 'You'll figure it out.'

'I just can't shake this feeling that something awful's going to happen.'

'Maybe it won't be as bad as you think.'

She snorted, 'Yeah, right. He hadn't been president five minutes before nearly three thousand people were dead.' She chewed her lip but was finally unable to refrain from adding, 'Killed by the nuclear bomb from his lab!'

'There was no evidence that Baltar had anything to do with the explosion,' he reminded her. If there had been it was a sure bet he would be sitting in a jail-cell right now, not lording it up aboard Colonial One. And, besides, what possible motive could Baltar have to blow-up Cloud 9 during his own inauguration? 'Now repeat after me: The president's problems are not my problems.'

'I'd love to be his though,' she muttered sourly, draining the remains of her coffee and dropping her foot to the floor.

'Laura,' he sighed. She was like a dog with a frakking bone and her continued obsession with Baltar was starting to wear his patience thin.

'Oh what?' she said, narrowing her eyes combatively. 'I'm just supposed to put him out of my mind for the next four years?'

'How about for five minutes?'

He regretted it the instant he said it. The expression on her face was glacial.

'I'd better get going, I'm sure Colonel Tigh will be here any minute. Thanks for breakfast,' she said flatly, though she had hardly touched it.

'I'll see you tomorrow,' he said quietly, standing too, if only to get a better view of her leaving. More than five words exchanged, even more than five whole sentences, that was progress, and whatever string of expletives had been going through her head, she had refrained from actually saying them. He was encouraged.

'You know that's the second time this week I've seen Roslin leaving your quarters first thing in the morning,' noted Tigh, looking over his shoulder as he stepped through the hatch into Bill's quarters. 'Something you want to tell me?'

'You know we've been going running,' said Bill, resolutely ignoring the annoyingly inaccurate inference. He wished 'going running' was a euphemism.

'I know that before this you hadn't gone running in five years or more,' he said slyly.

'Yeh, well I didn't think she'd take to boxing.' Nor was he fool enough to put a pair of boxing gloves on Laura Roslin and stand within striking distance.

'Why are you doing this?' asked Saul curiously.

'The woman's just been made redundant. You remember what that's like and she hasn't got anyone. I've got Lee, you've got Ellen, we're the lucky ones.'

'Lucky, yeh,' scoffed Saul, not feeling so lucky with Ellen giving him earache about moving down to the surface. 'And why do we care?'

'Because she was prepared to give her dying breath for this fleet and she deserves more than to be tossed aside,' said Bill with perhaps a little more vehemence than he'd intended, judging by the way Tigh was now looking at him anyway.

Truth was, he still hadn't shaken the impressions left with him since he'd found out about her illness; her strength and selflessness had humbled him, her courage far surpassing his own, which had seemed to diminish with the hours of her life as he realised how difficult it would be to lead the fleet without her. Some part of him knew that he had placed her on a pedestal back then, one she would no doubt have remained upon forever had nature taken its course.

Of course Laura's continued existence meant that he must inevitably find her out to be as human as the rest of them and sure enough, a few months after her recovery, she proved her fallibility on an ambitious scale. Still, he'd been able to see the good intention behind the criminal act and that she had not, finally, gone through with stealing the election left his lofty image of her largely untarnished. It wasn't that he thought she was perfect, she'd made her fair share of mistakes, but even her mistakes (so far as he could discern) came from a selfless place. She'd been willing to sacrifice not only her life but her principles, her soul, if it meant doing what was best for everyone else.

He'd realised back on Kobol that she was everything he'd always hoped for in a President, someone he could honestly look to for hope and guidance. People were idiots to trade Laura's honest, unwavering devotion to their well-being for Baltar's pie-in-the-sky promises - but democracy said they had every right to be idiots. No amount of sitting around calling them idiots was going to change that.

He just hoped Laura would remember that soon.


	6. Chapter 6

Before they knew it Laura had been aboard Galactica more than a month and had both acclimatised to the early wake-up call and stopped complaining about the exercise. Most mornings she was out of her room before That Frakking Music even started. Not everything was as easy for her to get used to however and she was still an unpredictable breakfast companion, though the outbursts were gradually becoming less frequent. Very gradually.

Bill would be lying if he said he wasn't nervous about tonight. Seizing on her relatively good mood this morning he'd asked her to dinner and she'd accepted. Now he was terrified he was going to frak it up by saying the wrong thing, which he found himself doing frequently lately. Thinking he was going to say something wrong wasn't going to help him though so he tried his best not to. He just kept telling himself that if he could handle Saul, he could handle anything.

He was just beginning to wonder if she'd changed her mind when he heard her knock and the hatch swung open. 'Sorry I'm late,' she said, stepping inside and pulling the hatch shut behind her. 'Still having some trouble with the lights in my room. I think something's come loose.'

'Since you attempted a tonsillectomy on my ship?' he clarified.

'I claim temporary insanity and as it was your music that drove me insane, I would even go so far as to say it was your own fault, Admiral,' she said, seemingly unrepentantly, though they both knew better. 'I don't suppose you've got anymore of those lying around?' she asked, taking in the table and unlit candles.

'I'll have someone take another look at the wiring tomorrow,' he promised. 'Can I get you a drink?'

'Absolutely,' she said, shrugging 'whatever' when he asked what she'd prefer. She was dressed casually, in a soft, grey jumper and black trousers, and casual seemed to be the mood of the evening as she plopped herself down on the couch and made herself at home, attention instantly attracted to the row of books along the top. 'I suppose I've got more time to read now,' she mused, taking down a volume.

'There's the silver lining,' he said, handing her her drink before sinking down into the creaking leather himself.

'I suppose so. Depends on whether I can convince you to change your lending policy, doesn't it? Or lack thereof.'

'I'll consider it,' he hedged, clearly implying that she was going to have to work for it.

'What?' she asked, leaning away from him slightly as she scrutinized him, as if she would be better able to discern his intentions from there.

He laughed, 'I think I'll wait till you've got a few more of those in you.'

'In that case,' she said, downing the inch of liquid in one and handing him the book in her hand as she got up, 'I think I'll pour myself another.'

And another and another. Bill was afraid if he didn't get some food into her soon she'd be paralytic within the hour so he sent down to the galley for dinner. Not that Laura couldn't hold her liquor after all those years of attending diplomatic soirees but everyone had their limits and she seemed determined to find hers tonight.

'So…' he said, halfway through their meal.

Laura looked up at him, a forced smile on her face as she raised her glass to her lips again. It was obvious he was about to ask her something personal.

'I can't make you talk. I just thought you might want to,' he said, shaking his head slightly as if he were at a loss, which he was.

'I didn't come here for a therapy session, Bill.'

'Well that's good since I'm no therapist,' he said. 'Just a friend - I think.'

She sipped her drink again, neither confirming or denying it, perhaps thinking about it, and he felt a pang of resentment that was quickly quashed as he silently repeated the mantra that had stopped him from returning fire more than once in the last few weeks: "She doesn't mean it. Don't take it personally." Most of the time he really did believe that she couldn't help it. He could remember a time not so long ago when he hadn't been such pleasant company either. Of course Laura hadn't been around to see that, though she was largely the cause of it with her rebellion.

'I've never been much for sharing,' she said finally, sketching quotation marks around the last word. 'I mean, it doesn't change anything, things are what they are, I don't see what talking's going to do.'

'Might give you a new perspective,' he suggested.

'A new perspective or just perspective in general?' she asked and Bill sensed he was in dangerous waters. So what was new?

'It's easy to convince yourself a situation is a certain way when you only have your own opinion to rely on,' he said carefully.

Obviously not carefully enough though. 'Look, I don't need advice right now and I don't need fixing, I just need time, so can we please change the subject?'

Bill paused at the flash of anger in her voice, debating the advisability of pursuing the subject and coming down on the side of not-at-all advisable. Risk of getting a fork in the eye: HIGH. 'Okay,' he agreed, taking new interest in his food.

Laura sighed. 'I'm sorry, that was uncalled for,' she said ruefully. 'Now you see why I haven't been getting out much lately. I am not good company, even when I want to be.'

He shook his head, 'It's okay, I shouldn't have said anything.'

'You said 'so', hardly grounds for me biting your head off. I'm… I shouldn't have… I mean, I…' she broke off in obvious frustration at her sudden inability to complete a sentence. She pushed back her chair and Bill reached out to stop her, both arrested mid-action by a knock at the hatch. Moments later it swung open to reveal Colonel Tigh who ducked inside, pulling the hatch closed behind him with a distinctly furtive air.

'Asylum,' he groaned, lurching towards the drinks cart and only belatedly realising that Adama wasn't alone. 'Ah, not interrupting anything am I?' he asked, determined to have at least one drink to fortify himself whether he was disturbing them or not.

'Ellen?' questioned Bill, needlessly.

'Where?' asked Saul, head whipping up to check the hatchway. Laura couldn't help a snort of laughter, something not lost on Bill, as Saul slumped, realising it had been a question and not a hail. 'I swear to gods if anyone tells her they saw me come in here they'll be scrubbing the sewage pipes for a year,' he said darkly, downing his drink and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

'You know she's going to come looking for you eventually,' said Bill.

'I could always hide in the head,' Tigh suggested slowly, as if he knew how ridiculous he sounded, a colonel in the Colonial Fleet, hiding from his own wife.

'You don't think she'll look in there?' asked Bill sceptically.

'You've got a point there. Okay, how about if you (he indicated Roslin) go in the head with me and - wait, wait! Hear me out - and you come out while she's here. She'll never suspect that we were in there together.'

'With good reason!' laughed Laura, not sure if she was offended or not.

'All I can say is gods help you if she does check anyway. I'd like to see you talk your way out of that one,' said Bill. He really would.

'Some friend you are,' said Saul, pouring himself another drink.

'With friends like you two a man could get very thirsty,' said Bill. Laura shot him a smirk as she held her glass out to Tigh to be refilled, obviously feeling a little braver with a third person in the room to ward off anymore personal questions. That or the drink was starting to kick in. Bill shook his head.

'What? You expect me to buy my own drinks? Unemployed, remember.'

'Funny, I just heard we needed someone to scrub the sewage pipes…'

She narrowed her eyes at him, 'You wouldn't.'

Saul pulled up a chair, sliding her drink over to her. Bill didn't mind him sticking around. He was pretty sure Laura had been about to walk out of here before he'd arrived - now she was smiling. Well, no one knew how to drink their worries away better than Saul Tigh and an empty drinks cabinet was a small price to pay to hear Laura laugh for the first time in a month. He hadn't realised how much he'd missed it.

'So you got a pack of cards lying around?' said Saul, rubbing his hands together.

'Are you finished?' asked Bill, indicating Laura's half-eaten dinner.

'Mm,' she nodded, 'I'll help you clear away.' Afterwards she excused herself to use the bathroom, wagging a warning finger at Tigh as she went, 'Alone.'

The moment the door was closed Saul turned to Bill. 'You sure you don't want me to -' he nodded his head towards the hatch, '- get out of your way.'

'You're not in my way,' said Bill, emptying the last measure of whisky into his glass before pulling a fresh bottle from the cabinet. Saul obviously hadn't given up the idea that there was something going on between him and Laura and Bill hoped it wasn't because he was being utterly transparent about his feelings for her. Maybe Saul just knew him too well. Well enough not to pursue the subject anyway, at least for now. 'Cards are in the second drawer,' he said, nodding in the general direction as he had his hands full decanting the new bottle.

Laura almost walked straight into him on turning out of the bathroom. 'Whoops,' she laughed, steadying herself on his arm. 'How many have I had?'

'Can you still remember your name?' asked Tigh, in the attitude of someone applying a test.

'Yes,' said Laura, though she had to pause for a fraction of a second to think about it.

'Then not enough,' he said, shuffling the deck of cards at the table. 'You play?'

'A little,' she hedged.

'Define 'a little',' he said, suspicions raised by the coy look on her face.

'Where's the fun in that?'

And she certainly did have fun kicking their asses. Not that the boys weren't valiantly trying to hold their own, she just seemed to get better the drunker she was - or they were getting worse the drunker they got. Or Bill had been distracted at a critical moment by the way Laura had leaned forward to check the stakes and he hadn't managed to claw his way back since. Whatever the reasons, Laura had managed to get enough loans out of Adama that she'd probably have reading material for a year, not to mention the pack of smokes she'd relieved Tigh of.

'Remind me never to play for money with you,' said Saul with a groan as she produced another full-colour hand.

'Absolutely not,' chortled Laura, sweeping up her winnings. 'I think I've found my new career.'

'At least we've still got our shirts,' said Saul, starting to laugh, 'You remember those girls on Picon?'

'You'll have to be more specific,' said Bill, shuffling the cards and wondering where this was going. Fleet headquarters had been on Picon and there were a lot of misadventures to choose from over the years. Picon City was built to get a soldier in trouble.

'You know the ones: tall blonde, cute redhead.'

'Ah gods,' he said, shaking his head ruefully.

'What happened?' asked Laura, wholly intrigued.

'This was back when we were working freighters,' explained Tigh. 'We were down on Picon for some R'n'R, met a couple of pretty girls, got to talking and one of them suggests going back to their place. Of course, we weren't about to turn 'em down, I mean these girls were -'

'Very attractive,' supplied Bill, interrupting Saul's impression of an extremely buxom woman.

'Very attractive,' agreed Saul emphatically, still looking like he was holding a pair of invisible melons. 'Anyway, we get back to their place and somehow end up getting into a game of strip triad.'

Laura raised her eyebrows at Bill, surprised and just a touch impressed. She'd never really pictured Bill as a ladies' man before. Perhaps it was the fact that he still wore his wedding ring, she just couldn't imagine him picking up girls in bars. Too risqué for the stoic admiral. Tigh, on the other hand… She'd have to ask him how he met Ellen sometime.

'Sharks,' said Bill, of the two girls, refocusing her attention.

Tigh laughed, 'Well, they were winning alright. We're sitting pretty in our boxers and hadn't got so much as an earring off either of them.' The mental image alone was enough to make Laura titter. 'And, well, not long after that…' said Tigh, drawing it out for dramatic effect and Laura suddenly wondered if she actually wanted to hear the end of this story. Bill groaned, covering his eyes. 'Their boyfriends turned up.'

'No!' exclaimed Laura, both horror-struck and engrossed.

'I'd just like to point out that we didn't know these guys existed,' said Bill, as if he could salvage some part of his pride.

'Not till we were climbing out the window in our birthday suits anyway!' guffawed Tigh, slapping the table.

'Oh my gods!' gasped Laura between giggles. 'What happened to your clothes?'

'The blonde threw them out of the window a little too enthusiastically. By the time we got down the fire-escape to the street a bunch of frak-wits from the bar across the road had run off with 'em. They'd been stood outside, probably saw it all and thought it'd be funny.'

'Oh, they definitely saw it all,' laughed Bill.

'And of course our frakking wallets were in our clothes,' laughed Saul.

Laura clapped a hand to her mouth in delighted dismay. 'You mean to tell me -?'

'Five kilometres. Naked,' nodded Bill, in unhappy confirmation.

'And it's frakking cold on Picon.'

Laura was in stitches now, half-collapsed at the table, and it was contagious. It took them a good few minutes and another round of drinks to calm themselves down. 'Oh my gods,' gasped Laura, massaging her aching face. 'I have to pee,' she announced suddenly, getting up, wobbling, and promptly sitting back down again. 'My legs appear to be drunk,' she said, as if unable to fathom how this remarkable effect had been accomplished. The second attempt was more of a success, though her path to the bathroom wasn't exactly straight and true.

'I'm surprised she's not under the table yet,' commented Saul quietly, once the door was safely shut.

'Give her time,' he said. 'Seems to be where she's aiming for.'

Saul briefly raised an eyebrow but said nothing, being in no position to comment on anyone else's drinking habits. 'Seems to be having a good time.'

'Just don't tell her about that stripper on Canceron.'

'Was that the one who could tie a cherry stalk in a knot with her tongue?' he asked thoughtfully.

'That's the one,' said Bill, glancing at the bathroom door, just in case.

'Gods, I'd forgotten about her…' said Saul, gaze unfocussed for a moment, a slow smile spreading across his face. 'You know you wouldn't let me tell Carolanne that one, either.'

If Bill had a response to that Laura's re-emergence swiftly silenced him.

'You're quiet,' she noted, as she sat down. 'You weren't talking about me, were you?' she joked.

'No,' they said simultaneously and a little too quickly. She looked at them suspiciously.

'So what were you talking about?' she, naturally, asked.

'Cherries,' said Saul. Bill booted him under the table and Saul was hard-put not to yelp.

'Cherries?' she repeated.

'They're a type of fruit.'

'Yes, I know what they are.'

'Just wondering what they're gonna put on sundaes now…' Bill could have kicked him again. Laura was getting more and more suspicious by the moment and he really didn't want to get to the point where they had to tell her the Canceron-stripper story in order to convince her that they hadn't been talking about her behind her back - when she'd walked out of the bathroom at least…

'Sundaes?' she said sceptically.

'Yeh, that's -'

'I know what a sundae is, colonel,' she said, with a slight bite of impatience.

'You looked confused.'

She narrowed her eyes but then seemed to decide she couldn't be bothered to dig for answers. 'It's alright, you don't have to tell me,' she said with an easy shrug, clumsily tapping a cigarette from the pack in front of her and rubbing Saul's loss in his face. 'You gonna deal?' she asked Bill, in whose hands the cards lay forgotten.

'Yes, ma'am,' he said, just relieved that all cherry-related inquiries had ceased. He had half a mind to grass Saul up to Ellen…

No sooner had he thought it than there was a knock at the door. Bill looked at his watch and saw it was almost midnight, a bit late for a social call, so it probably really was Ellen. 'Frak!' said Tigh, jumping up and looking for a likely place to hide. You'd think the admiral's quarters would have more than one exit. He looked at Laura, who took one look at him and started shaking her head and laughing. 'Bill, hide my glass. You - with me,' he said, urging Laura out of her chair as another, more persistent knock came. 'I rigged an election for you - you owe me!' he said, dragging her out of her chair and not caring that Bill looked like he'd rather like to thump him for his last comment. Apparently rigged elections were not to be treated lightly but this was life and death!

'This is ridiculous,' said Laura, nonetheless ending up shut in the tiny bathroom with Saul.

'Shh!' he said, when they heard the outer hatch open but Laura could feel a fit of the giggles bubbling up. It was just so absurd, they were acting like childrenand she knew that if any one of them were sober this would never have happened and, gods help her, she couldn't keep it in! She clamped a hand over her mouth, Tigh shooting her murderous looks which only made her laugh harder as they listened to the muffled sound of Bill's deep voice, no doubt proclaiming that not only was Saul not there, but he hadn't seen him all evening.

'Will you pull yourself together! You've gotta get out there!' Tigh hissed. Laura just looked at him, biting her lip and shaking with suppressed laughter. 'Go!'

She gave him a thumbs up, knowing that if she opened her mouth she was doomed, and pulled the door open, almost squashing Tigh between it and the wall. She half-tripped through the doorway, vision impaired by the tears in her eyes. As predicted, Tigh's attractive but taxing wife, Ellen, was there.

'Ellen!' she said in a strangled voice. She also said, 'How nice to see you,' but most of it registered at a pitch only audible to dogs. Behind Ellen's slightly bemused back, Bill was beginning to feel the urge to laugh himself as he witnessed Laura's struggle. Every time she opened her mouth to say something giggles dribbled out instead.

'I didn't mean to interrupt,' said Ellen, glancing between the two of them curiously. 'Just looking for that husband of mine.'

Laura nodded, unable to do anything else bar squeak.

'But I guess he's not here. Um, enjoy the rest of your evening,' she said, with a shadow of a smirk as she moved towards the door. It would have come off perfectly had it not been for the 'Ach-choo!', immediately followed by what sounded remarkably like skin and bone connecting with a door at speed. Laura thought it best not to be an obstacle in Ellen's path and (in an attitude not dissimilar to someone in desperate need of a bathroom) scurried over to where Bill stood in front of the sofas, almost folded in half with laughing. Slapstick was not dead.

They sank as one hysterical mass onto the sofa though Laura - who appeared to have lost all muscle control - continued sliding until she was on the floor, crying into Bill's thigh, absolutely incapable of looking contrite even in the face of Ellen's obvious and deep displeasure when she emerged from the bathroom with Saul in tow. Saul was not laughing but he did have a nice red weal coming up on his forehead.

Ellen looked as if she'd like to take the matter up with Laura but quickly deduced that it would be pointless since both former-president and admiral were practically insensible. 'I'll deal with you two later,' she promised. 'Now, you mind explaining to me what the frak you were doing locked in a bathroom with that school-teacher?' they could hear her demanding as she dragged poor Saul off by the ear, who looked as if he'd rather be on his way to the gallows.

'Oh. My. Gods,' gasped Laura, when she regained the power of speech ten minutes later, pulling herself into a sitting position (rather than continuing to lie flat on her back wedged between the trunk and the sofa, as she had been since the Tighes departure).

Bill was also sitting up, ruddy-faced as he wiped tears from his eyes. 'Not quite how I saw the night ending,' he commented.

'Do you think he'll survive?'

'Intact?' he asked, looking dubious, and they both started laughing again.

Laura could still hear him laughing as he took off to the head to relieve himself. She chuckled to herself and yawned, sinking back into the sofa, legs propped up on the trunk. The next thing she knew Bill was shaking her by the shoulder and she frowned a little, blearily attempting to open her eyes. 'I'm not sleeping,' she slurred.

'Course you're not,' he humoured her.

She hummed, trying to wake herself up a little. 'S'pose that's my cue to leave,' she said, dragging a hand through her hair and taking a deep breath as she sat up. She squinted around for her shoes which she had dim recollections of discarding under the dining table some hours ago. Bill retrieved them for her, agreeing that it was probably high-time she was tucked up in bed.

'I'll walk you back to your room,' he said as she slipped the second shoe on and reached out for a helping hand to stand.

'Oh no, that's 'kay, s'not far, I'll be fine,' she said airily, tottering precariously on her feet before she'd even contemplated locomotion and Bill caught her shoulders. She swallowed, 'I don't feel so good.'

'Do you feel sick?' he asked urgently, preferring to know sooner rather than vomit-covered-uniform-later.

'I need to sit down,' she said, clutching his arm for support as the couch see-sawed below her.

He helped her sit before fetching the pail-like metal bin from beside his desk, hastily tipping out the paper contents. When he returned she was sitting forward with her head in her hands, groaning faintly. 'Here,' he said, placing the bin close to her feet. 'In case you feel ill.'

She slid it across to sit between her feet in optimum vomit-catching position, very much hoping she wouldn't have need of it. Meanwhile Bill wetted a flannel in the bathroom, wringing out the excess water and folding it into a neat, forehead-sized rectangle before taking it to her. He also had a tall glass of water standing by.

He spent ten minutes listening to her measured breathing from his perch on the trunk opposite before finally asking if the room had stopped spinning yet. She groaned again, pulling the flannel away from her face as she slowly raised her head to look at him. 'Why did you let me drink so much?'

He harrumphed, offering her the glass of water. She accepted it with a sincere thank you, gulping down a few mouthfuls with a thirsty smack of her lips.

'Mind if I just keel over here?' she asked, when she had taken her fill, handing both flannel and glass back to him.

'You can take the bed,' he said immediately but she shook her head.

'Trust me, with the state I'm in I wouldn't notice if I slept on the floor,' she said, moving the bin and slipping her shoes off again.

Before he could insist she was pulling her sweater off, exposing several inches of stomach in the process, and he felt compelled to get up and search for a spare pillow and blanket. Of course by the time he'd reached the other side of his quarters he'd remembered that the spare bedding was inside the very trunk he'd just been sitting on. Fortunately he still had the glass and flannel in his hands so he managed to cover his momentary fluster by disposing of them.

When he returned to remove the few items still scattered on top of the trunk Laura's attire was thankfully straightened out, though the little black vest she wore was distressingly low-cut. Luckily Laura was too sozzled to notice the way his gaze kept flickering uncontrollably towards her 'vest' as he bent over the trunk. He let the lid fall shut as he straightened up with a couple of blankets and turned to find her looking up at him expectantly, swaying slightly with inebriation, hair tousled from it's trip through her jumper.

She was beautiful. How could he think otherwise? In that moment he was incapable of thinking anything else. Not that he would act on it when she was like this. And he didn't just mean drunk. When the alcohol wore off she still wouldn't be in any position to hear that he had those kinds of feelings for her. Any betrayal of them now would be sure to end in disaster. A guy could dream though and he was pretty sure he'd be dreaming of Laura in that black vest tonight.

Laura gestured for the pillow and he broke eye-contact, looking down as he unfolded a blanket, motioning for her to scoot up a little as he spread it over the seat. Her gaze followed his actions without really seeing and he wondered, not for the first time, what she was thinking when she got that glazed look in her eye. This time his curiosity was to be somewhat satiated though he felt a pricking of his heart at her words.

'What do I have to do to make you hate me?' she asked softly. 'I've been awful to you and … look at you,' she shrugged, looking as though she might cry over his entirely banal efforts to make sure she was comfortable for the night.

'Why do you want me to hate you?' he asked, because he couldn't answer her question. Because he honestly couldn't think of anything that could change his feelings for her so drastically.

'Because you should,' she said simply, as if he would mistake her assuredness for truth. As if he could. 'You're better than me, Bill. You do the right thing. I do 'the right thing right now' or 'the right thing for the survival of the fleet' but that wasn't always the right thing. I don't have the courage to stand on that kind of principle when there are lives at stake. I didn't have the right. They trusted me with their lives. But you, you're... noble. You're a hero, you're Zeus on Mount Olympus, you're -'

'Not nearly as drunk as you are,' he interrupted quickly, trying to laugh off her litany. In no universe did he believe himself to be made of better stuff than Laura Roslin but he'd rather tell her so when she was more likely to remember it - and believe it. 'You need a good night's rest.'

'Huh,' she laughed, lying down. 'Chance would be a fine thing.'

He'd turned down the lights and was headed towards his own bed when she finally spoke again. 'I'm sorry for the way I've been treating you,' she called out of the shadows after him. He stopped, turning back but not moving any closer, sensing she needed the darkness and distance to say what she had to say. 'I don't mean to be such a bitch all the time, I just,' he heard her sigh, shift a little. 'I don't know what I'm going to do or what's going to happen with this frakking planet and… I'm scared,' she finally admitted with difficulty. 'I hate just sitting around here. It's making me crazy.'

'I know,' he said softly. He hadn't been the one who needed to hear it out loud. 'Get some sleep.'


	7. Chapter 7

Admiral Adama had hoped to slip out of his quarters this morning without ever waking the temperamental redhead curled up on his sofa, therefore he had tiptoed around his quarters getting ready, quietly shutting the bathroom door to muffle the sound of the water as he performed his morning ablutions. He had even decided to get his breakfast elsewhere this morning rather than risk Private Boyd waking her on delivering it. Unfortunately, feeling slightly the worse for wear, he wasn't quick enough to leave before Colonel Tigh arrived for their morning briefing and his slamming of the hatch alone was enough to startle Laura awake.

Noticing movement to his left, the colonel turned. 'Well don't you look like a ball of sunshine,' grinned Saul, taking in her panda-eyes and mussed-up hair, which seemed to grow redder with her annoyance. 'How's your head?' he asked, obviously way louder than necessary as far as Laura was concerned.

'Frak off,' she said grumpily, pulling the blanket up over her head with a groan and for the briefest moment Saul could have sworn he had seen her flipping him off.

He raised his eyebrows at Bill as he entered his office, 'Charming.'

'Why do you think I didn't wake her?' he said quietly. Very quietly. 'So I guess Ellen decided to let you live.'

'That's because she's thinking up something worse than death,' said Tigh, no doubt speaking from experience. 'So what did you two get up to after we left?'

'Not much. We went to sleep not long after you left,' said Bill, putting his shoes on behind his desk.

'Must have been pretty wasted to not make it back to her own room,' he said, given that her room was less than fifteen metres down the corridor.

'As if you're one to talk about getting 'pretty wasted', Colonel,' said Laura frostily behind him, swathed in her blanket, having peeled herself off the leather couch. Damn she was stealthy.

'Never said I was,' he remarked, with entirely too much enjoyment as she winced again at his volume.

'Maybe it would be better if you said nothing at all,' suggested Laura, rubbing her temple as she made her way into the bathroom and closed the door carefully behind her.

'What crawled up her ass?' asked Tigh.

'Three-quarters of a bottle of whisky,' said Bill, though he knew the hangover was probably only half to blame - if that. He pulled on his uniform jacket.

'That why you're in such a hurry to get out of here?' asked Saul, looking faintly amused.

'Worry about yourself,' he warned, secretly pleased to see someone else get it in the neck from Laura for a change. Suddenly he wasn't in nearly as much of a rush to leave. He might even stay for breakfast if there was going to be a floor show.

'I've had my fill of moody women for one morning,' said Saul. 'Maybe I'll meet you in CIC.'

'Might be wise,' said Bill, chuckling a little as he clocked the bruise on Saul's forehead. 'I won't be long.'

'I bet you won't,' said Saul, quickly adopting an expression of innocence as the bathroom door opened again and Laura stuck her head out.

She ignored Saul, holding a bottle of pills up so Bill could see them. 'Painkillers,' he confirmed and she retrieved the glass of water Bill had abandoned on the drinks-cart last night before disappearing back into the bathroom.

Saul tilted his head as if to say 'good luck' and made a swift getaway while he could. Bill looked around for his glasses. They weren't where he usually left them before bed and now he was trying to remember when he'd last had them. Certainly during the triad game. He checked the table and then around and along the top of the sofas (in case Laura had found them and put them out of the way) and was in the process of feeling down the sides of the cushions when Laura finished in the bathroom.

'Lost something?' she asked, the blanket now folded in her arms, not quite obscuring the black vest he had been surreptitiously admiring the night before. Okay, maybe not the vest itself but in his defence he hadn't had an ungenerous amount to drink himself.

'Glasses,' he said, slowly straightening up as he realised where they might have vanished to. There was every possibility that he had been so busy ogling Laura in that top while he was bending over to get her bedding out last night that he had failed to notice his glasses slip out of his breast pocket. He opened the trunk and, sure enough, after a few seconds of probing amongst the spare blankets he had his hands on his glasses. He might have spent a very long time looking for them and serve him right for losing them in so wicked an activity.

Laura looked mystified, 'How did you-?'

'Lucky guess,' he said quickly, taking the blanket she offered him and dropping it into the open trunk before looking determinedly at her face, which she had taken the opportunity to wash.

He was about to ask her if she was staying for breakfast when the phone started to buzz and Laura cringed, putting her hands over her ears and creating some distance between herself and the deliberately abrasive noise, which didn't help her much as it was coming from the direction of his office too. Picking up the receiver by the door, Bill soon found himself having trouble concentrating on what Dee was telling him about a drifting transport shuttle as Laura, rather than gathering her things to leave, climbed into his bunk and slid beneath the covers with a sigh. He was further distracted when, after a protracted bout of wriggling, she dropped her trousers out from under said covers. His covers. On his bunk. Laura was in his bunk in that top with no trousers on…

He swallowed. 'Launch the rescue bird,' he said to Dee, hanging up without knowing if there had been more and moving cautiously towards his office. He needed a couple of files off his desk. Honestly.

'I'm stealing your bunk for a few hours,' she said, her pale arms and shoulders above the covers, the rest of her sadly hidden.

Just be cool, Bill. 'I'd say help yourself but you already have.'

'Would you like me to get out?' she asked, propping her head up on her arm and looking far cuter than a middle-aged woman should after a night of heavy drinking.

Bill glanced at the crumpled trousers on the floor but somehow managed to say without a hint of innuendo, 'Stay as long as you want.'

'Thanks,' she said, settling down again. 'Thank the gods I wasn't in my room when that frakking music went off today. I think my head might have exploded.' She shuddered at the thought.

'It wouldn't have. I had it switched off yesterday afternoon,' he said, picking up the files. He thought she'd earned it. After all the point had been to get her out of her room and, well, she definitely wasn't in her room anymore. 'I'll let you get back to sleep.'

'Thank you, Bill,' she said and he gave a mental sigh. He'd fantasised about having Laura Roslin in his bed many times and in none of those fantasies had he been leaving. Life was cruel.


	8. Chapter 8

Thankfully, when Laura was once again forced into consciousness by the macabre machinations of her nightmares, she no longer had the sensation of a head full of cotton wool to contend with, though the headache of what the frak she was going to do with her life next still weighed heavily on her mind and, unfortunately, there was no pill for that. Clearly, her present situation could not continue. For one thing, she was getting bored sitting around all day and there were only so many times you could rearrange your clothes, toiletries, bedding and/or furniture before you started coming off a little obsessive-compulsive. Not that anyone but the boy who brought her meals would have a chance of noticing her constantly shifting desk and wardrobe, and he already appeared to think she was out of her , you spilled one breakfast tray over someone…

Bill thought the way the boy avoided looking her directly in the eye like she was some kind of gorgon was highly amusing when they breakfasted together, and she could see him trying to stifle his smile every time she tried to be cordial only for the boy to start stammering. Okay, so maybe she'd shoved the tray into his hands a little too hard and the coffee down his trousers had been a little hot but a guy his age should really have better reflexes and it had been weeks ago. Honestly, his cowering was starting to become provoking and it almost seemed like Bill wanted her to snap just to see if the boy would actually have a nervous breakdown. How she hadn't upended a tray on Bill, too,she didn't know.

How he hadn't throttled her in the last few weeks, she didn't know either. She'd been obnoxious, and as much as her inability to goad Bill had frustrated her in the beginning she had since come to value his thick skin when it came to her loose cannon of a temper - not that he hadn't barked at her a couple of times. Not nearly as often as he'd obviously wanted to though nor, if she was honest with herself, half as often as she'd deserved it. She'd been defensive, and sometimes she'd even meant to be mean, played into his expectation of her perpetual bad mood to stop herself from revealing too much. She felt that it was a sign of weakness to need, well, anyone, and Laura didn't wear weakness well.

Frak, she never did work up the guts to tell Bill about her cancer herself, couldn't bring herself to tell a man she'd spent half her time fighting with and the other half flattering that he need only wait a few months and she'd be out of his hair for good. Back then she hadn't wanted her illness to be another excuse for him to minimize her role as president.

Of course that had been before their quest for the Tomb of Athena; everything seemed so different after Kobol, not least the way she felt about him.

He would never know how close she'd been to total physical and mental breakdown in that gods-forsaken forest; how every doubt she'd ever had had come crashing down on her at once; how deeply she had known that failure would be death in her weakened condition, and almost welcomed it. Huddled under that tarp on a drowning hillside, bereft of her spiritual advisor, left with only Elosha's blood-stained prophecies and a cylon guide, she had prayed to the gods, prayed more deeply, offered more of her soul than ever before, for a miracle. If she couldn't find the map to Earth her only legacy would be false hope, and she wouldn't even be around to answer for it when the fleet began to fall apart…

And the gods had sent her Bill. Bill, who she'd thought more likely to shoot her than shake her hand after estranging him from his son, had turned out to be full of forgiveness and willingness to help her find the tomb, even though he thought it was a fool's errand. How could she not feel differently about him after that? How could she not admire the strength of character it took to admit his mistakes, the good heart that had literally answered her prayers and brought him to her in her hour of need?

And he'd been there ever since, a pillar of support, though Laura would find it hard to admit to herself just how much stronger he'd made her feel, in ways that had nothing to do with the fact that he was the head of the military. Sometimes it seemed the only way she could allow herself to depend on someone was by pretending it wasn't happening.

Like now. She'd been on Galactica a month and she'd done what? Apart from bitch about Baltar? Nothing. After the election she could've ended up anywhere, doing anything, if not for Bill snatching her out of the flames again. Nobody else had been queuing up to take her in. And how had she thanked him for his kindness? By damaging his ship, treating him like crap and drinking all his liquor. He'd been a true friend and she'd been an ungrateful ass. A sponging, ungrateful ass.

It was time to get a job and make herself useful again. Hadn't Bill said something about a job last night? Her memory was a little fuzzy. Well, whatever it might be, she would take it. It was the only way she knew how to show him that she had better intentions for the future than she had demonstrated in the last few weeks. She might also try remembering that he was the last person in the world she should be getting mad at after everything he'd been trying to do for her. He'd probably appreciate that. And a proper apology for not realising that sooner wouldn't be inappropriate either…

She sighed, reluctantly sitting up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. A glance at her watch, held close to her face, told her what she'd already suspected, that it was late in the morning and she had lounged around long enough. Why was Bill's bunk so much more comfortable than hers? She stretched her arms over her head with a groan before bowing to the inevitable and throwing back the covers.

She dawdled in the shower, 'borrowing' Bill's soap to wash off the smell of whisky and cigarette smoke. It couldn't get the smell out of her clothes though, nor the taste out of her mouth, and she was eager to get back to her own room to change after she'd finally - grudgingly - switched off the water and gotten dressed. That didn't stop her from lingering long enough to steal a book from Bill's collection though, leaving a note in the gap on his shelf, just in case he actually noticed it was missing. No matter how many times Bill told her there was a system to the piles of books stacked around his quarters she had yet to figure it out, strongly suspecting that they weren't as orderly as Bill liked to make out. She was half-tempted to keep the book unless Bill could tell which title she'd taken by the hole left in this 'system' of his. Unfortunately, that was also known as theft…

When she got back to her quarters she found Specialist Henderson waiting to check the wiring again and smiled apologetically for keeping her. 'I just got here,' Cally assured her, when Laura said she hoped she had not been there long.

Laura let the technician in and excused herself to brush her teeth, taking a few candles with her in anticipation of the lights going out. They were flickering now, occasionally winking out for a couple of seconds together before flaring back into life. It was downright perilous if one was in the act of applying eyeliner or mascara, granted not something she did often at the moment, perhaps a situation she should remedy, not for vanity's sake but to lift her spirits as only a little pampering could. She decided she was going to devote at least some of the afternoon to a manicure and pedicure, sheer indulgence, the kind of indulgence she hadn't had time for since The Fall. She had a bottle of nail varnish somewhere. Red, of course. There was something appealing about red toenails.

The lights had gone out and Laura carried the candles back into the living area with her, carefully standing them on the small desk before grabbing up the packet of cigarettes she'd dropped on the bed on her way in and lighting one. 'I apologise if I was short with you last time,' said Laura, rummaging in the desk drawer for something to use as an ashtray and coming out with a small trinket box, perfect with its metal interior. 'I've been a little short-tempered lately,' she said, in somewhat of an understatement as she sat down on the bed.

Cally took the pocket-light out of her mouth. 'Hey I've had a few electric shocks on the job, makes me cranky, too,' she shrugged, having already forgotten about it in the relative calm since. 'And we were all pretty pissed after the election. I mean, no one who'd actually met Baltar would vote for him. He's such a creep, it's like he thinks he's a gift from the gods or something,' she shuddered. 'And then, you can be talking to the freak one minute and next second it's like he doesn't even see you. I'm telling you the guy's got issues…' She trailed off, looking over at Laura, her eyes widening. 'Sorry, I'm talking too much,' she apologised, realising she had probably been too free and tacking on a belated, 'ma'am.'

'I didn't realise you'd spent so much time with him,' said Laura, pouring herself some water from the jug beside her bunk and trying not to appear as interested as she was.

'Not by choice,' said Cally, turning back to the open panel. 'We were both on the raptor that crashed on Kobol.'

And then she stuffed the pocket-torch back in her mouth and went back to work and Laura was left wondering what might have happened on Kobol while all hell was breaking loose in the fleet, wondering if she had overlooked something that might have helped her in the election. Not that that should matter anymore, but it did. She wanted to dig up Baltar's every dirty little secret, though she was pretty sure Tory had done a thorough job of it after Baltar sprang his intent to run for the presidency on them, mid press-conference no less. Frakking Baltar. Literally. His file was stuffed with enough sexual liaisons to turn the pages blue. He was constantly shuttling off to Cloud 9, usually charming enough to pick someone up in one of the many bars but not above paying to have his needs met.

She wondered if either the Cloud 9 disaster or the presidency had changed his habits any but was forced to conclude that they probably hadn't. Baltar was used to living in the public eye, he knew how to work the press and woo the public and still run around like a frakking playboy. It was nothing short of infuriating when she thought how she had staggered under the enormity of the responsibility, how she had agonised, day and night, over the decisions that meant keeping the human race alive but slowly tore her soul to shreds. And what was keeping Baltar up at night?

Probably his leggy 'aides'.


	9. Chapter 9

Adama hadn't walked six paces into his quarters before his phone was ringing. He grumbled to himself, shooting a rueful glance at the whiskey decanter as he passed it on the way to his office. He had been looking forward to a pick-me-up before dinner. It had been one of those days where he felt like he had accomplished nothing despite not having had two minutes to himself in fourteen hours, a day full of a thousand trivial annoyances rather than anything that could be termed an emergency, or even urgent. Galactica and Pegasus suddenly found themselves without the excuse of protecting the fleet to shield them from almost constant civilian demands. It was tedious. Not that they weren't still protecting the fleet. It was just a slightly different kettle of fish when you were hidden inside a nebula and hadn't heard a whisper from the enemy in over a month, an enemy that had supposedly ceased its hostile campaign against its creators.

Now he was being told that the President wanted a meeting tomorrow, by his own former officer no less, and Bill could already guess what it would be about as he reluctantly agreed and hung up the phone. He'd have to go over to Colonial One, not something he relished, but rather that than risk Baltar crossing paths with Laura, small as that risk might be given her recent misanthropy. One ship - even a Battlestar - wasn't big enough for the both of them.

He poured himself a double measure, noticing as he did so Laura's empty water glass from this morning. He glanced over at his bunk, saw that it had been remade and suddenly wondered if he would be able to smell her on his pillow. He resisted the urge to check, keeping it as something to look forward to at bed-time, the scent of her between his sheets… Bill tore his mind out of the gutter, loosening his top button as he sank into one of the low leather armchairs in his office. He had to go and see Laura later and he'd rather not do it with those kinds of images in his head. The mental picture his mind had conjured up after this morning had been tormenting him all day as it was.

He turned his thoughts back to the current president, who was getting impatient with the lack of actual settlement on the surface. With the military having the experience required to co ordinate the ships, people and supplies from orbit to the ground the government needed their help, or more accurately, demanded it, but what was Bill supposed to do? Where did Baltar think the ships were going to land when they hadn't even finished clearing the landing site, let alone the settlement site, yet? Twenty-odd ships and tens of thousands of people needed a lot of room.

He took a swig of whisky and sighed. The time for settlement would be coming soon enough and people were already queuing up to stake their claims on New Caprica. They'd have to be ordered according to usefulness, of course, workers with experience of heavy machinery, farming and construction, etcetera, first. It was not a job he had the time or inclination to carry out personally. Normally he would find someone on the crew to delegate it to, usually Gaeta if he hadn't decided to throw in with Baltar as his Chief-of-Staff. Fortunately he knew someone with some spare time and extensive expertise in people management.

Laura did not seem surprised to find Bill on her doorstep an hour later, after he'd had a second drink and a much-appreciated dinner, waving him in without preamble. 'I was beginning to think you were going to keep me in suspense until tomorrow,' she said, offering him her desk chair to sit on.

'You look nice,' he couldn't help noticing, completely sidetracked.

That was an understatement. She looked, well, no way he'd ever seen her look before. She was in a black and red floral-print dress that finished mid-thigh for a start.

'Thank you,' she smiled. 'Though the softened image did nothing to convince Boyd I'm not still a tray-throwing monster underneath. You know he actually dropped the tray tonight? Luckily out in the corridor rather than in here, but still... I know I can be cranky but I didn't think I was tremor-inducing.'

Bill wasn't sure 'softened' was the word for this new look. Not that he was complaining; the heavier, darker makeup seemed to reflect her recent attitude more than the minimalist professional look he was used to. She looked as he imagined an Edward Prima heroine would; the bolshie broad who catches the PI's eye in some dark, smoky jazz club and, of course, nearly always turned out to be up to her neck in all sorts of sordid things.

'And you were wearing that dress?' he asked, as if he couldn't understand how it had failed to work in calming Boyd either.

'As you see me,' she confirmed. 'Plus a white mask and chainsaw. Or so you'd think from his reaction.'

Bill found himself once again trying not to laugh at the Boyd situation, especially when he knew exactly why he'd dropped the tray. Bill had almost dropped the file he was carrying upon seeing her tonight. He was having trouble taking his eyes off her. 'Your hair's different.'

She smiled again, surprised he'd noticed. 'Mm, Tory stopped by earlier and I managed to convince her to give it a trim, quid pro quo, except now I'm finding hair all over the place. Damn vents move it around. The rest,' she indicated her appearance, from make-up to red toenails, practically inviting him to look her up and down when he had only just managed to stop it, 'is, well, just a time-intensive ego boost. All dressed up with no place to go, so to speak. Can I get you a drink?' she asked, opening the bottom desk drawer and pulling out a bottle of whisky with a flourish. 'Think I owe you after last night.'

'I won't say no,' he agreed, pulling his chair further into the centre of the room and sitting. 'It's been one of those days.'

So. Laura's former aide had finally decided to check in, had she? He'd never liked the efficient but apparently ruthless Tory Foster as much as Billy Keikeya, the man she had replaced, who had worked for Laura since before the attacks and was killed by terrorists aboard Cloud 9 four months ago, scant weeks after Laura's recovery from cancer. Billy had been a good man, had stayed behind when Laura had broken out of Galactica's brig in order to help facilitate their reconciliation when the time was right. His death had been a hard blow for Laura; in her own words, he'd been the closest thing she had to family and she'd valued his idealistic opinion more than Billy had ever fully appreciated.

Billy would never have talked Laura and Saul into rigging the election as the admiral was convinced Tory had.

'What is Ms Foster doing these days?' he asked, and Laura shot him a brief look over her shoulder, obviously picking up on his tone, before turning her attention back to their drinks; his whisky, hers water.

'I believe she called it 'keeping her options open'. What?' she asked when she turned back to find him staring again.

Busted. That dress just clung to all the right places. He'd lost his train of thought. 'I expected to find you still nursing a hangover and you look like you've just come back from a weekend shopping in Paluva.'

'Behold the power of a makeover,' she joked, handing him his drink with a 'cheers' before seating herself on the bed opposite.

Powerful indeed, thought Bill as he tried not to stare at her legs, wondering if she was doing this on purpose, if in fact her new plan was to give him a heart-attack, because she was definitely affecting his blood-pressure.

Probably just wishful thinking: death by tantalising hemline.

'I owe you one hell of an apology for the last few weeks,' she said next, snapping him back to reality.

He shook his head. 'You apologised last night.'

'I slurred at you last night,' she disagreed, 'that's not a proper apology. I was so far out of line, Bill. Some of the things I said-'

'Well, I did keep waking you up at the crack of dawn,' he said, not feeling entirely blameless for some of her outbursts. She obviously wasn't a morning person. 'Forgive and forget?' he suggested. 'Start afresh.'

She shook her head a little, once again surprised by his swiftness to expunge her sins. Would she ever realise how much she meant to him? Probably not, if Private Boyd was anything to go by.

'I would like that,' she agreed.

'Just keep that in mind when I offer you this job,' he said, only half kidding as he handed her the dossier outlining the position. She looked at him with a 'humph' of foreboding, placing her glass down on the desk in favour of the cigarette which had been silently going up in a column of blue smoke since his arrival.

'Okay…' she said, with the air of someone bracing themselves as she opened the file.

Bill held his breath. Whilst - technically - she was more than qualified for the job, he knew he was asking a lot of her by suggesting she involve herself in the settlement process when she had been so vehemently against it from the get-go. Would she be able to put her personal feelings aside and accept that the settlement was going ahead with or without her? Or would she simply tell him to go frak himself, as she had with Tigh earlier? Laura seemed determined to read the brief thoroughly before making a decision either way, quietly puffing on her cigarette, glasses perched halfway down her nose whilst Bill nervously sipped his drink, quickly emptying the glass, unsure if the occasional sardonic snort signalled amusement or simple incredulity.

Finally, she took off her glasses, looked directly at him and said, 'You have a sick sense of humour.'

'No joke.'

'That's what's so sick,' she said, tossing the file aside. 'You want me to organise the settlers? Me?' she repeated, clearly wondering if he'd lost his marbles. 'Knowing full well that I'd love nothing more than to see Baltar fail spectacularly, you want to put me in charge of choosing his workforce?'

'He'll probably hate the idea as much as you do.'

She considered. 'He would, wouldn't he? Now there's a thought.'

'Laura…' he warned, discerning a distinctly devilish glint in her eye, not helped by the edgier new look nor the smoke coiling around her.

'Yes?' she replied as if candyfloss wouldn't melt in her mouth.

'I know you wouldn't deliberately sabotage thousands of innocent settlers just so you can turn around and say I told you so when it all falls apart. Especially when you know that Baltar and Zarek's reign will fail well enough on its own.'

'Not when you put it like that,' she said, pouting a little with disappointment.

'Remember what you said on the deck of Colonial One the day you left?' he said, reminding her that this wasn't about Baltar but what was left of the human race, about giving them the best odds for survival, starting with getting the relevant ships lined up and landed properly.

'Good advice for any government employee,' she said pointedly, lighting another cigarette and Bill could see that even that was an act of defiance, a 'frak you' to setting a better example.

'Elected or not, they still need you - and I could use your help,' he added, hoping that carried some weight.

'What about your Mister Gaeta? Seems to me to be right up his alley,' she said, glancing at the folder again.

Oops… 'He's a little busy these days. He's Baltar's Chief of Staff now,' he said, just spitting it out.

'Oh. I didn't know that,' she said, failing spectacularly in her attempt to look nonchalant at being caught out of the loop. 'Trying not to spend so much time listening to the wireless…' She glanced at his empty glass. 'Get you another?'

Whilst she hadn't blown the proposition out of the water straight off, he didn't think she was quite ready to accept it either as she faffed about refilling his drink and then straightening the blankets after she'd sat back down. 'I don't wanna help make Baltar look good,' she finally admitted petulantly, shoulders slumping. 'Is that sewage job still available? Much less filthy work.'

'If you really feel like you can't do it, you can always say no,' he said reasonably, knowing that his use of the word 'can't' could be construed as a challenge, though Laura was unlikely to react to such a pedestrian goad, politician that she was. Ex-politician.

She sighed heavily, 'I wouldn't have to actually talk to Baltar?'

Come on, he wasn't that naive. 'I'm not anticipating it but I'm prepared to run interference if necessary,' he reassured her.

'I suppose that's something,' she said, though it sounded more like she meant the opposite. Indeed she looked so unhappy at the proposition that he wondered why she didn't just tell him where he could stick it. He was already trying to come up with something else to offer her (the sewage pipes being self-cleaning bar when Tigh was feeling particularly bad-tempered) when she asked, 'Can I sleep on it?'

'Really?' he said, perhaps sounding a little too surprised.

'What is this?' she said, firing up immediately, as she was wont to do of late. 'First you ask me to take the job, then you act like I'm an idiot to consider it. Am I missing something here?'

'Whoa,' he jumped in quickly, hoping to nip another argument in the bud. They'd been doing so well. 'Can you blame me if I'm surprised you're considering this? Given the way you feel about the current administration?'

She ran both hands through her hair as if she wanted to tear it out, belatedly remembering the lit cigarette in one hand and jerking it away from her head in mild alarm. Had she heard a sizzle?

'Talk about your hot-heads,' she joked, putting down her cigarette and patting her hair, just in case. Bill chuckled then groaned at the dreadful pun. 'I know, I know, I'm sorry,' she apologised.

'I've warned you about that fiery temper…'

'Oh, gods…' She groaned even more emphatically than he had at her terrible pun. 'Now that was awful.'

'Made you laugh,' he pointed out.

'That was gagging not giggling.'

He shook his head, pretending to look annoyed, before flashing a quick smile and asking, 'Are we running tomorrow?'

'You're asking me?' Her turn to look surprised.

He nodded, 'Up to you.'

She looked at her clock, thinking about it. 'I don't see why not. Truth be told, I actually kind of like it,' she said confessionally. 'I haven't been this fit in years.'

'Me either,' he admitted with a smile, glad that she wasn't giving up their runs at the first given opportunity. He might not have missed the running itself but would very much have missed seeing Laura first thing every morning.

She gave a little, lopsided smile that made her eyes sparkle and his stomach flip-flop as she added, 'Plus, it's the perfect opportunity to steal your shower.'

And she definitely never missed an opportunity to hog his shower in the mornings, so much so that he now made sure to get in there first. He only took fifteen minutes in the bathroom, Laura invariably took at least double that. Not that he minded how long she spent in the shower, the water supply aboard Galactica being inexhaustible, just so long as he didn't have to wolf his breakfast down in order to get to work on time.

He glanced at the clock, realising that if they were going running tomorrow he should let her get some sleep. He drained the rest of his drink and Laura recognised that he was about to leave, getting to her feet first. 'It's late,' he said apologetically, honestly sorry to be going so soon as he handed her his glass. She left it on her desk, stubbing out her cigarette.

'I'll let you know what I've decided tomorrow,' she said, glancing at the folder again. He nodded.

'See you in the morning,' he said, turning to leave.

'Bill,' she stopped him, and he was more than a little surprised when she pulled him into a hug. It was most unLaura-like, at least in his experience. 'Thank you,' she said, 'for everything you've done.'

Would wonders never cease? He pressed a warm hand against her back and quickly found that she smelled as good as she looked. Suddenly he was afraid he was going to say or do something ill-advised. Though he knew the appropriate response should be 'anytime' or 'no trouble at all', he said something pretty much guaranteed to make her hit him instead. He was a gentleman, not a eunuch and Laura was close to irresistible tonight. 'No task too great for 'Zeus on Mount Olympus'…'

As predicted, she quickly released him, punching him in the shoulder, cheeks instantly aflame.

'Ass,' she accused.

'No, you think I'm god-like, I'm honoured,' he continued, feeling both relieved and frustrated at the retraction of her from his arms.

Laura continued to redden. 'Frak off!' she warned, now crimson with embarrassment. He laughed, making it over the threshold a split-second ahead of her foot and safely away from temptation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sigh* This is my favourite scene so far. Bill's so cute, lol.


	10. Chapter 10

True to her intention to earn her keep, Laura had taken the job - and she'd been taking it ever since. The fleet captains had soon found out that Roslin was now keeper of the waiting-list to land on New Caprica and everyone, but everyone, wanted to be at the top of that list. The only time the phone wasn't ringing was when she was on it.

Which she happened to be when Bill arrived home from work on this particular night. 'Listen, I don't care if you used to land your ship upside down with a fluorescent pink tutu on, until you allow a maintenance crew aboard to carry out the mandated structural and engineering diagnostics and bring your ship into line with current regulations you won't be landing on New Caprica.' She paused, looking far from impressed with his response. 'Well Admiral Adama just walked in, maybe you'd like to tell him so yourself?' she challenged. She paused again, waving off Bill's briefly indignant look at being dragged into the middle of an argument the moment he walked through the door. 'No, I didn't think so,' she said in grim satisfaction, slamming the receiver down. 'Gah!'

Bill raised his eyebrows, reminding her that she had promised not to break anything in temper when he'd agreed to let her use his office to work. If she wanted the convenience of having the information she needed on hand and, more importantly, filed in such a way that she could actually find what she was frakking looking for (which she couldn't in her own cramped quarters) then she would have to learn to control her frequent urge to hit something when dealing with the public. She couldn't decide if Bill Adama was a master in unconventional therapy or disturbingly gifted in the blackmail department. Maybe he simply valued his belongings.

'Sorry,' she apologised, tossing her glasses onto the desk and running both hands through her hair, something she had taken to doing frequently lately. 'Frakking Captain Murdoch,' she explained, fingers poised in mid-air as if ready to close about the man's throat. "I put this ship down on Saggitaron with ten million tonnes of grapefruit in the hold and only one thruster working, lassie!" she said, lowering her voice in mocking imitation and gesticulating more and more forcefully as she got into her stride. "And you're telling me that I have to follow the same regulations as everyone else?! That I'm not allowed to risk the lives of nearly four-hundred people, as opposed to frak-loads of grapefruit and my own clearly cracked head, in this garbage-scowl of a cargo-ship that probably hasn't seen an engineer since the day it was built?!" Honestly! Some people! He must be the luckiest man in the world to have survived this long,' she huffed, more than a little red in the face, hands finally resting on her hips. 'How do you get someone decaptained?'

"Decaptained?" he repeated in amusement. 'Are you sure you don't mean 'decapitated'?'

'Don't you start with me,' she warned, mostly in jest, pointing a finger at him, and he thought he heard her muttering about someone's head being about to roll.

'Wouldn't dream of it,' he said, being rather attached to his cranium. She narrowed her eyes at him sceptically. 'Drink?' he asked.

She sighed, looking dissatisfied with the suggestion. 'No, you know what, I think I'm going to go for a run, blow off some steam,' she said, walking out from behind the desk after him as he disappeared in the direction of the drinks cart. 'You mind if I use your shower after?'

'Not at all. Stay to dinner,' he offered, something he did every time he got back from work to find her still there. He liked the company in the evenings. Okay, he liked her company, full stop, whenever it came.

'We'll see how the run goes first,' she said with a flash of a wry smile, before rolling her eyes and turning back to tidy up her papers for the evening. When her dedicated line started ringing again she refused to answer it. 'I'm not here,' she said, backing towards the door in an attempt to make that statement a reality. 'See you in a while.' And she ducked out.

'Adama,' he said, the phone receiver seeming no worse the wear for Laura's rough handling.

'Sir, I have a Captain Murdoch asking to be put through to Laura Roslin. I know your orders were to hold all calls but he says their transmission was cut off,' said Dualla, as usual the voice in CIC.

'It was,' he confirmed with a smirk. 'Tell him to try again in the morning.' He shouldn't laugh. The gods knew the constant ringing of the phone had driven him to distraction on day one and he'd since taken to having Laura's work calls stopped when he went off duty at the end of the day, for her sake as well as his own.

He unbuttoned his tunic, grabbing his chance to use the shower before Laura got back, keen to sluice off another tedious day and once again try to loosen the knot in his shoulder under the near-scalding water. It had been bothering him for a couple of days now, ever since an impromptu sparring match with Lee. When he got out he realised Laura must have come back to drop off a change of clothes before her run, for the green sweater and black trousers, amongst other neatly folded laundry on the table, were definitely not his.

She was almost an hour in coming back and looked well and truly done in as she leant over, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. 'How many laps?' he asked, when he thought she could answer.

'Three,' she panted, straightening up to begin her warm down, tank-top plastered to her skin. 'And a half,' she added ruefully. 'Next time.'

Seven klicks was still impressive, considering it had been little more than a month since they'd first started going running, and then she'd barely been able to manage one. 'Did it work?'

'On my appetite,' she nodded, rotating her shoulders a few more times and stretching her arms towards the ceiling before moving on to her legs.

Bill was trying very hard not to be distracted by his vantage point on the sofas but it still took him a couple of seconds to register that she had just accepted his invitation to dinner. Good, he thought, ordering dinner gave him something to do - other than fight the seemingly automatic tilting of his head as Laura touched her toes that was. She was going to catch him at it if he didn't get a grip and honestly, if he kept spectating, it was going to become mortifyingly obvious in the not-too-distant future down which gutter his thoughts flowed.

He got up to use the phone but on reflection paused long enough to ask, 'If I order dinner now will it be cold by the time you get out of the shower?'

As if on cue, Laura's stomach growled. 'Doubtful,' she said, with a soft snort of laughter.

And she was right - unfortunately for Private Boyd, who almost spilled his tray the moment he clapped eyes on her, as if she'd jumped out at him rather than strolling calmly out of the bathroom towelling her hair dry.

She rolled her eyes, 'Need a hand with that?' she asked, not keen to have to wait for a second dinner to arrive - again - if he upset the first but the closer she got the more the items rattled on their tray. 'My gods, I'm half your size and twice your age, what could you possibly be afraid of?' she finally snapped incredulously. Boyd looked more terrified than ever. 'Why are you cowering? Oh for goodness - Admiral,' she said in a tone that clearly begged him to step in before she completely lost not only her temper but quite possibly her sanity, too.

'Just put it on the table, son,' he said, somehow keeping a straight face as the boy, barely more than twenty and now beet-red, all-but-dropped the tray and scarpered.

'Oh my gods,' said Laura as the hatch clunked shut, shaking her head. 'What is wrong with that boy? I mean, seriously, what else am I supposed to do here?' she asked, helping to lay the table. 'Can't you put him on a different shift or something? You are the Admiral.'

'I think he likes the job he's got,' said Bill.

'You do not,' she contradicted. He couldn't possibly believe that after witnessing their brief interactions. 'He looks like he thinks he's about to be tortured every time he sets eyes on me.' Bill didn't say anything but she could see the smile he wasn't quite managing to squelch. 'Bill,' she said pleadingly, 'come on.'

He chuckled, shaking his head. 'Nope.'

'Seriously?' she asked incredulously as he seated himself. 'You're not going to do anything?'

'It's five minutes of your day.'

'But he's terrified of me!'

'He's not terrified of you.'

'Did you hear the plates rattling?' she asked, picking up his empty glass to refill while she got herself a drink.

'He's not terrified of you,' Bill repeated, and Laura thought he sounded pretty sure about that. Too sure.

'Well, why else would he act like that? What aren't you telling me?' she asked, shooting him a suspicious look over her shoulder. Bill started laughing again. 'Ooh,' she breathed through gritted teeth as she turned around, narrowing her eyes at him as she debated whether to give him his drink or throw it at him. If he laughed one more time…

Well, let's just say she seated herself within kicking distance.

'I thought you were hungry,' he said, when she continued to scowl at him.

She was hungry. She was also annoyed. It was hard to decide which was more powerful at this point. She picked up her knife and fork and Bill eyed the cutlery warily, obviously unsure which impulse was winning out, too. In the end it was hunger: the one good thing about New Caprica was the fresh foodstuff and the smell of the food in front of her was making her stomach rumble again. 'Smells good,' she admitted, digging in.

They ate in silence for a while, both enjoying what amounted to a nicely done roast dinner, Laura deliberately not asking what kind of meat it was. The meals aboard Galactica were usually generous, apparently sticking to the maxim that an army marched on it's stomach, but for once this wasn't a problem for Laura, though her waistband was feeling a little tighter. She set down her knife and fork for a moment, popping the top button on her trousers with a sigh of relief.

'Have you heard anything about the Gemenon Traveller? I still haven't got an engineering certificate and they've got a lot of construction workers aboard. If it doesn't pass inspection I'm going to have to start yanking people off other ships in favour of the skilled labourers and you know how well that's going to go down.'

'Mm,' Bill agreed, swallowing a mouthful of roast potato. 'Don't remember seeing anything but I'll check after dinner if you like.'

'Thanks,' she nodded, sipping her drink. 'It was meant to be one of the first to land. I've already had to push the landing date back once. Did you get the revised schedule?' Bill looked vague. She shrugged, 'Never mind. I'm sure you've got more important things to worry about.'

'Something on your mind?' he asked.

For a moment she debated whether or not to say anything. There was nothing Bill could do about it anyway. She half shrugged, shaking her head.

'What?' he prodded.

She caved. 'See for yourself,' she said, getting up to retrieve something from the office. Bill frowned as he read the paper with the official presidential seal across the top she had received that day.

'He can't be serious.'

'He's gotta be doing Zarek a favour, but you know who's going to get the stick for it when the fleet finds out?' she said, indicating herself.

Bill did not look best pleased but, as she had anticipated, there was nothing he could do about her orders from on high to place the Astral Queen right behind Colonial One in the queue to land. Not that she didn't think a thousand men would make considerable headway in building the settlement but did they really want that many criminals running free on the surface? Did Zarek really think people would have nothing to say on the subject?

'Personally I recommend waiting for Colonial One and the Astral Queen to land, dropping a nuke on them and getting the hell out of here,' she said, swigging her drink again.

'And how would we explain that to the rest of the fleet?'

'Someone leaned on the wrong control?' she suggested.

'Think they'll buy it?' he asked, as if seriously contemplating it as a plan of action.

'Probably not,' said Laura, but she appreciated his playing along with her homicidal fantasies all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, feedback would be gratefully received and greatly appreciated :)


	11. Chapter 11

You'd think that after almost two months of waking up in cold sweats the impact of her nightmares would have lessened some, or so Laura grumbled to herself as she doused her face in cold water. For all intents and purposes she had done her best to put the election behind her and move on, unfortunately her subconscious didn't seem to have gotten the memo and she was still being reminded of what Baltar's presidency had already cost the human race several times a week. She was never going to be free of the man.

She brushed her teeth and swept her hair up into a ponytail, getting ready for her run though Bill wouldn't be expecting her for another half an her quarters were not as depressing as they'd once been for she'd made an effort to trade for some, if not tasteful, at least cheerful tapestries and throws to brighten the place up as well as a couple of cushions for the sofa. Hell, it was practically homely and Laura was able to make herself quite comfortable as she poured herself a drink, lit a cigarette and settled down to a chapter of the latest novel she'd stolen from the admiral. There was nothing like sinking into another world to take your mind off your own, especially a good mystery. Unfortunately, this was nothing like a good mystery, and by chapter three it wasn't a mystery at all.

'I mean, it couldn't be any more obvious that it was that Darius guy but I can't even be bothered to read it just for the satisfaction of being right. What dross.'

'You say that like I recommended it,' said Bill, secretly wondering how she could run and complain at the same time.

'It was on your bookshelf.'

'Generally where books are kept. I haven't read them all.'

'Well, this is one less you have to read,' she said, as if she had saved him from mental agony.

'Must be why I never got past chapter two,' he pondered.

'You could have warned me.'

'Yeah, advise the book-thief on the best volumes to steal. Why didn't I think of that?'

'I bring them back, don't I?'

'So far as I can tell.'

'Are you saying you don't know?' she asked, with a saucy look. 'I thought you had a 'system'.'

'I'm beginning to think I need an inventory list not a system.'

'You know this doesn't count as one of my loans,' she said, having made him issue her with IOU's after their little triad game with Tigh.

'You still borrowed it.'

'But I only read three chapters. I want a new one, one you've read - and enjoyed,' she added, covering her bases. She trusted Bill's taste in books since they were so similar to her own, but her faith in his library was slightly battered. She used to think she could pick anything off his shelf and it would have at least some merit: no more. From now on she was getting recommendations.

'Running out of steam?' she asked when he didn't say anything. Well, they had been round the ship twice. Fortunately they were almost back on their own corridor so it was a good place for him to call it quits.

'Are you implying that I can't keep up with you?' he asked, trying not to sound as fagged as he was.

'No, I'm inferring it.'

'Once a school-teacher,' he accused, both he and Laura eyeing the home-straight as they rounded the last corner then looking at each other impishly. It was unbelievably childish but there didn't seem to be anybody in this section yet.

'Last one back's a rotten egg!' challenged Laura suddenly, putting on a spurt of speed to get ahead of him.

Why that cheeky- 'Cheat!'

She turned just long enough to flash him a grin, knowing he didn't stand a chance of catching her though he was giving it a good effort. She hit the end of the corridor, jumping neatly down the steps a second later when Bill nearly squashed her colliding with the wall himself.

'I win.'

'You cheated,' he panted, as he followed her into his quarters.

'Says the rotten egg,' she gloated.

'You're five years old.'

She shrugged sheepishly, not really in a position to argue with that assessment at present, especially when she had such playground classics as 'I'm rubber, you're glue…' running through her head. 'I'm hitting the shower,' he announced needlessly as she started warming down.

'Don't forget to shave that bit under your nose,' she called just as he was shutting the door and chuckling evilly at his completely unintelligible yet doubtlessly acerbic retort. She'd been teasing him about his fledgling moustache all week. Not because she had a particular problem with it, it was just fun to finally have something to wind him up about, especially after the whole Zeus incident. She'd thought he was going to drown himself in his porridge when Tigh pointed out he'd missed a bit yesterday. It couldn't have been funnier if she'd planned it.

Finishing her stretches with no sign of Bill, she wandered over to check her agenda for the day and noticed a new batch of names for the settlement list. Every day, more and more names. With a dozen ships now landed the work on the ground was speeding up. Tents were being set up as temporary accommodation but the real construction work hadn't even begun. The prospect of spending gods knew how long living in tents didn't seem to phase people though, especially those currently living aboard ships that weren't going to be able to land.

They obviously hadn't been reading the weather reports otherwise they might have realised that it was winter on New Caprica, no time to have only canvas standing between you and the elements. Which was exactly why nobody would be able to settle minus a ship for at least another month. Even Baltar could recognise the dangers of subjecting people to that kind of cold.

She glanced over the new list, attention arrested on the second page. Not believing what she saw the first time, she picked it up, holding it closer to her face and praying that she'd simply misread it without her glasses on. She hadn't. Maya was on this list. Maya and Isis. Maya, who'd lost her baby, and Isis, the hybrid child who Laura had secretly stolen from the cylon currently stewing in a Galactica jail-cell and given to Maya to pass off as her own. Not her finest moment as president but a necessary step to protect the child from cylons and humans alike.

She couldn't just have them wandering around on the surface unwatched and unprotected. Frak, Tory was meant to be keeping an eye on them, it was no accident that she was housed aboard the same ship as Maya. How had this slipped by her?

She had her hand on the phone to find out just that but thought better of it, Bill would be out of the bathroom any moment. She'd be better off going over to the Zephyr in person to sort this mess out, then she could visit Maya too and convince her of the mistake she was making. Easier said than done when Maya had no idea that Isis was really Hera. Frak. She was going to kill Tory.

'All yours.'

She jumped. She'd been too horrified to hear Bill come out of the bathroom but thankfully she had her back to him.

'Sorry,' he grinned, opening a cupboard. 'Something wrong?' he asked, probably because she had failed to remind him of his deficient shaving skills again.

She forced herself to act normal. 'No, no. I was just thinking of paying Tory a visit. I haven't been off Galactica since I got here.'

'Sounds like a good idea,' Bill agreed, pulling out a clean uniform.

'Yeah,' said Laura softly, sharing a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. 'Can't just stay locked up here forever.' Much as she might want to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading x


	12. Chapter 12

"In this short life

That only lasts an hour

How much - how little - is

Within our power"

~ Emily Dickinson ~

 

The Zephyr, one of the more easily recognisable of the fleet's ships by its enormous ring, was fit to burst. Hell, pretty much every ship in the fleet was overcrowded since the Cloud Nine disaster but Laura wasn't fighting her way through overly curious passengers on any other ship. She realised that they were probably wondering where she'd disappeared to after the election but, seriously, didn't they have anything better to do? Every time she had to stop and wait for a bottle-neck to unclog she got more and more annoyed, especially as people kept feeling the need to tell her 'I voted for you', as if she cared. If they didn't get out of her way soon she was going to explode and gods help anyone unfortunate enough to be standing between here and her destination.

She had to pound on her former aide's door more than once to get her to open up, though her tardiness in answering was quickly explained by the presence of a half-naked man in her quarters. Laura didn't look remotely abashed to have interrupted them as the anonymous stud hurriedly finished dressing and fled. Obviously Laura looked as pissed off as she felt; he hadn't even bothered tying his bootlaces. She snapped the door shut behind him.

By the look on her face, Tory knew she was in trouble, she just hadn't figured out what for yet as she pulled on a light, green sweater. 'This is a surprise.'

'So was finding Maya's name on a settlement list this morning,' said Laura, skipping the pleasantries.

'What? Maya's settling?' said Tory, obviously hearing the news for the first time.

'Perhaps something the person who's supposed to be keeping an eye on her should have known.'

'She didn't mention it last time I saw her.'

Laura raised her eyebrows, 'Which was?'

Tory rubbed her neck, looking distinctly uncomfortable. 'Maybe a fortnight ago.'

''Maybe a fortnight ago'?' she repeated incredulously. 'Well that's just perfect,' she spat. 'For frak's sake, Tory, do you have any idea -' she broke off, shaking her head, livid.

'Laura, I'm sorry-' began Tory, far too late.

'Frak 'sorry',' snapped Laura, exerting considerable restraint in the face of an overwhelming desire to throttle her former aide. 'If I can't convince her to change her mind…'

'I thought you were in charge of the settlement list,' she said, a touch of sulky accusation in her voice.

Laura's look was withering. 'And bumping them off it for no apparent reason won't look in the least bit suspicious. We can't afford to draw attention to them.'

As if she hadn't already thought of that. At most she could only delay Maya, and not for long at that. Once the second wave started descending on New Caprica it was all over.

'Drink?' asked Tory, apparently out of asinine ideas as she poured herself a generous measure of emerald ambrosia.

'No,' refused Laura, though she could do with both a stiff drink and a cigarette. 'I have to talk to Maya. Try and fix this.'

But she had a sinking feeling that the situation might just be irreparable.

'How'd it go?' asked Tory a little over an hour later. They'd agreed to meet in The Dockers' Arms after Laura's talk with Maya, a locale Laura instantly took advantage of by ordering a double whisky, neat, staunchly ignoring the attention she was getting from the other patrons.

'It didn't,' she said, grimacing as she took a generous gulp of her drink. 'What could I say? It's like you said, people want real beds in real homes breathing real air and they're willing to brave the elements, and fool themselves into thinking the cylons won't find us here, to get it. Nothing I said made an impact. People are idiots,' she muttered to herself, quickly emptying her glass and signalling for another.

As bad as Tory felt for failing to keep an eye on Maya she knew that even with early warning it probably wouldn't have made a difference, she'd still be moving down to the surface and they'd still be in the same predicament. She therefore didn't feel guilty enough to try to make up for this transgression by getting suckered into babysitting Maya and Isis down on New Caprica. Oh no, Tory Foster did not do tents. She wasn't overly fond of babies either, one of the reasons she hesitated to call on Maya too often, sitting there pretending to be interested in every erupting tooth and bellyache and the ability to sleep through the night.

'So what are you going to do?' she asked.

The 'you' wasn't lost on Laura who had pretty much expected this attitude, after all, it wasn't like she was Tory's boss anymore, she couldn't just order her to do it because the thought of having to do it herself was almost incomprehensible. Oh gods, Laura really didn't want to have to move down to the surface - but who else was there? Only three people knew Isis's true identity: herself, Tory and Doc Cottle. And as Tory would not and Cottle could not, given that he was enlisted, that left Laura almost literally holding the baby. She could almost feel the shackles of her presidency claiming her back. She might not be in the big chair anymore but she was no less bound to the oath she took and the decisions she made back then. 'Kill myself,' she said, shaking her head as if she could not believe the cards life kept dealing her.

Tory didn't know what to say. She sympathised, but valued her own happiness more. It was a dog eat dog world, sometimes you just had to look out for number one. 'When are the last batch of settlers scheduled to leave?' she finally asked.

Laura had dug her cigarettes out of her handbag and lit one now, slowly deflating as she exhaled. 'A month,' she said. 'They'll start transplanting people in two weeks - if they manage to mop up the flooding.'

'What are you going to do when you get down there?'

'How the hell should I know? I haven't exactly had much time to think about it, have I?' she said curtly. In fact she hadn't thought about it at all. She was thinking about it now though. She had a sudden urge to cry. She decided to scurry back to Galactica instead.

That night when she finally fell into a fitful sleep she did not dream about the Cloud Nine explosion or Baltar for once. She dreamed of Caprica instead, she dreamed she had been there when the bombs fell, a nightmare she imagined many in the fleet had shared, she dreamed of New Caprica and the bombs falling again and awoke in a blinding flash of nuclear light.

All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again.

She was a dead woman. She felt it in every limb as she lay cold in her bed, her only consolation that at least this time she would not have to live with the annihilation of the human race. Morbid as it was, that thought really did comfort her; she was tired of being one of the 'lucky' survivors, constantly having to pick herself up and troop on without the people she cared about.

She called Bill to beg off their run in the morning, not really in the mood to work out. To be honest, she was having trouble getting out of bed at all, she just wanted to snuggle down beneath the covers and imagine a life where she got to make her own decisions instead of being swept from pillar to post.

She was late for breakfast and couldn't face it when she got there, only pouring herself a cup of coffee. 'You look like hell,' said Bill, not troubling to sugar-coat his observation.

That's what she got for deciding she couldn't be bothered to apply foundation today. 'Headache,' she said, which wasn't just an excuse, the stress of the last twenty-four hours had culminated in a doozy.

'Let me get you some painkillers,' he said, getting up.

'That or a hammer,' she requested, massaging her eyes.

'We'll call that plan B.'

'Thanks,' she said, popping the lid off the bottle. She'd taken a couple of painkillers after she'd called him this morning but they'd hardly made a dent.

'Did you get any sleep?'

'Are the circles under my eyes that dark?' she asked, hoping to assuage his obvious concern with a joke and a small smile. He wasn't convinced.

'Maybe you picked something up aboard the Zephyr. I hear there's flu going around.'

'Honestly, it's just a headache, Bill. You want to do me a favour? Show me how to mute your phones.'

She was still attempting to smile, but underneath alarm bells had started ringing. Up till now all she'd thought about was how awful it would be to live on New Caprica, all of a sudden it began to dawn on her what she would be leaving behind on Galactica. She tried to imagine not seeing Bill every day, not having him there to gripe to, or laugh with, or steal books from. He was the best friend she had in the world and she found herself feeling a little knock-kneed as she contemplated facing the challenge of making a life on New Caprica without his support to keep her sane.

Every time she got attached to someone Fate threw a spanner in the works. Every single frakking time. Her headache throbbed ever more painfully. She didn't know how she was going to tell Bill she was leaving without cracking up, let alone convince him that it was of her own volition after the way she'd carried on in the last couple of months. What was she going to tell him when he asked her why she was doing it?

She couldn't exactly tell him she had to move down to the surface to keep an eye on the human/cylon hybrid she had conspired with a member of his crew to kidnap from his ship without his knowledge. She didn't think it would go down very well, nor was she willing to risk news of Hera's survival getting out should Bill decide to reverse her decision. She was convinced that would mean almost certain death for the child, not to mention breaking Maya's heart. Laura knew that she had given Hera her only chance of a normal life, she'd made the right choice, why did these things always end up biting her in the ass?

'Maybe you should lie down for a while,' said Bill, touching her arm to get her attention.

'Maybe I will,' she agreed. 'I think I have a migraine coming on.' Well, she had wanted to stay in bed all day; the way things were shaping up she just might get her wish.


	13. Chapter 13

The atmosphere at dinner was morgue-like and Bill seemed helpless to resuscitate it, worse, he seemed to make it a little worse every time he opened his mouth. Laura obviously wasn't feeling well, she hadn't touched her food and she'd been asleep in his bunk when he'd gotten home from work, but when he'd suggested a walk down to life-station all he'd gotten was an annoyed accusation of his being a mother-hen. The next topic of conversation he tried did nothing to lift her spirits, though he hadn't really expected it to.

'I was wondering if you wanted to say anything at the ceremony. The anniversary ceremony,' he clarified when she looked at him blankly. He was surprised that she could forget something as momentous as the one year anniversary of the attacks on their home-worlds. The atmosphere aboard was becoming noticeably more subdued as the date approached.

'Actually, I've been asked to lead the civilian service,' she revealed, 'so if you don't mind, I think I'll leave the military one to you.'

Galactica had had nearly two-hundred refugees camped out in the starboard hangar since the Cloud 9 disaster, those that couldn't be found a space on a civilian ship.

'I didn't realise they'd asked you.'

'And you didn't think I'd say yes even if they did,' she finished for him, reading his mind.

He shrugged. Guilty.

'It's the anniversary of the attacks, it's bigger than me. I should be there,' she said quietly, lighting a cigarette and tossing the packet onto the table in resignation.

'I'm sure they'll appreciate having you there.'

'Hmm,' she said, not sounding so sure. 'I have no idea what I'm supposed to say to them, but I suppose I'd better figure it out, only a couple of days to go.'

'I'd steer away from telling them they're all doomed, if you're asking my advice,' he said, with a ghost of a smile.

'But it's my favourite refrain,' she lamented.

'You'll think of something, you'll give them hope, you always did.'

'How can you still believe that?' she said morosely.

'Just because you stopped believing in yourself doesn't mean the rest of us did. You know if it hadn't been for this planet you would've won the election hands-down. They still look up to you, there's still a lot of good you can do here.'

Far from bucking her up this statement only seemed to make her sadder and she was soon trying to excuse herself for the night, as she was wont to do when the conversation threatened to take an intimate turn.

'Something on your mind?' he asked before she could leave, wondering if he'd missed something. She was always so taciturn with her feelings, always the brave face.

She shrugged, shaking her head. 'No more than the usual. I'll see you in the morning.'

'Laura,' he wheedled, trapping her hand on his shoulder with his own, reluctant to let her go this time. 'You know I wouldn't think less of you if you talked about it once in a while.'

For a moment he thought she was going to cry but she managed to blink back the tears and procure him a small, miserable smile. 'You're sweet,' she said, surprisingly him by bending to press a brief kiss against his temple, 'but I'll be fine.'

And she was gone, again.

***

A lot of things had changed since the fall of the twelve colonies, not least of them Laura Roslin. Her feelings, even the way she thought, were so different now. Her so-called principles had turned out to be nothing more than a meaningless line in the sand, brought to ruin, like everything else, by the cylons. This wasn't who she was meant to be, this hadn't been in the plan, she had never wanted to shoulder that kind of responsibility. Power had corrupted her, not because she thirsted after it but because life wasn't a movie that twisted and turned but always turned out right in the end, there hadn't always been a clean solution and so she'd been forced to use ones that made her feel dirty from time to time.

Forced by some frakked up machines and their frakked up idea of genocidal justice. Laura had one such machine in her sights right now: Galactica's resident cylon. She had been sitting in the observation room for almost an hour now, watching Sharon Valerii sleep, wondering what machines dreamt, for it seemed to be dreaming something. Did they have nightmares? She certainly hoped so, it seemed only fair, they'd featured in her nightmares often enough and she was sure she wasn't the only one. She was sure, too, that there were a lot of people who would pay dearly for five minutes alone with the cylon prisoner and a two-by-four.

Laura wouldn't mind taking a crack, watching it lying there, looking so human, when it wasn't human, not flesh and bone but flesh and ice; a machine, a stupid machine. In that moment she hated Sharon with every fibre of her being, hated her as the representative of a race that had brought her own to its knees, that had corrupted her, that had made her capable of such pure, unadulterated hatred in the first place. She'd been a teacher for frak's sake, the secretary of education, never in a million years had she pictured herself throwing people out of airlocks.

But they weren't people, she truly believed that; they were only imitations, unquestionably good imitations, built to prey upon their sympathies and their doubts and their weaknesses, but far from human. Humans stayed dead, those things got lifetime after lifetime.

She felt no gratitude towards Sharon for her own second chance at life; as far as Laura was concerned it had been Hera who had cured her cancer, and Hera was half human. Nor did she feel guilty for any emotional pain she might have caused Sharon by faking her child's death. On the contrary, right now she was glad, because nothing that thing felt could come close to the pain of the survivors of the Twelve Colonies, could make up for the anguish of losing billions of people, twelve distinct cultures, some of them barely represented in this altered reality. As far as Laura was concerned she had saved Hera from that soulless cylon and if Bill had any sense he'd flush it out an airlock tomorrow; every moment she was aboard she was a security threat.

Think of the devil. She heard footsteps and knew it would be Bill, she hadn't heard the phone ring with orders to turf her out nor did she think the guard would leave his post for a friendly chat, so who else could it be but Bill, come to see why he had gotten a phone-call at five in the morning asking permission for her to be let into the observation room. He had obviously granted it, and she had been here a while before his curiosity had finally gotten the better of him.

'Less than two hours till the ceremonies,' he said, not asking what had kept her here so long, or even why she was here in the first place. Perhaps he had already guessed. Or perhaps he didn't want to know.

'Do you ever think about what would happen if she escaped?' Laura asked, not sure if she was being rhetorical or not. 'You know we wouldn't stand a chance, if she led the cylons here.'

Bill was slow to respond. He already knew Laura's feelings on the subject, they'd discussed it at length after Starbuck's triumphant return with the survivors from Caprica, a rescue that wouldn't have been possible without Sharon. 'She's helped us a lot.' Which was his way of saying he had no reason to execute her.

'She knowingly allowed a cylon to board your ship not so long ago, Admiral, I wouldn't trust her with the safety of the fleet just yet. She's a conniving machine who thinks we murdered her child. She's more dangerous than ever,' she warned, taking her eyes off Sharon for the first time.

'I have faith in our security arrangements.'

'Huh,' she smiled bitterly. Just like he thought the settlers stood a snowball's chance in Hades of withstanding a cylon attack long enough to escape. While it was too late to stop the settlement, keeping Sharon around was a risk they didn't have to take - he didn't have to take, she corrected herself. She didn't have a say anymore, though of course the issue was a military one so she had never really had a say in the first place, only her powers of persuasion. Story of her life. 'Let's get this day over with,' she relented.

She didn't want to get into another pointless argument with Bill, today of all days. She wasn't really upset with him, just sick of the constant knot in the pit of her stomach, acutely aware of everything that could go wrong. Even if he walked into Sharon's cell right now and put a bullet in her brain it probably wouldn't loosen the knot in Laura's stomach, nor would it increase their odds of survival; there was every chance the cylons would find them without Sharon's help. Sharon was simply the nearest target for her pain, but today wasn't supposed to be about hating them, it was about honouring the memories of the billions lost.

And she had a speech to give.


	14. Chapter 14

The memorial had been sad. Not that Laura had expected it to be a joyful affair but she hadn't realised how hard it would hit her, sharing in the grief and prayers of Galactica's small civilian population. She'd spent more than three hours with them after the ceremony, surprising herself with her reassurances that Admiral Adama would keep them safe. They had already lost so much, she couldn't rob them of the little hope they had planted on this rock, not when it served no purpose.

Alone in her quarters afterwards, she unwrapped her idols for the first time since coming aboard Galactica, lit a dozen candles and seated herself on the floor with a scroll and pen. The civvies had given her the idea, each writing down as many names as they could remember and then burning the scroll. And still there were so many more who were too faint a memory to recall a name to mind.

Laura began with Richard, the man who should have been making the decisions instead of her after the attacks, and the other forty-odd people who could have ended up being president. The priestess Elosha, killed by a mine on Kobol. What did her sacrifice mean now? Laura had found the map to Earth but what good was that if she couldn't convince people to follow it? And Billy, sweet Billy. His death had been pointless right from the start…

She took his picture down from her desk. Gods, he had been so young. Losing him had been like having her heart torn out, which was, unfortunately, not a new sensation for Laura. Just when she thought she was done with that kind of pain, that she had guarded against loving anyone deeply enough to get hurt, that sweet, courageous, good man had slipped under her guard. She hadn't realised how close to her heart he truly was until he was snatched away.

She remembered the first time she had met him, interviewing him for the position he had filled for the last three years of his life. He was polite, respectful, accomplished, efficient, like all the other applicants, but what she'd really admired was that, contrary to his competitors, he didn't seem to be telling her what he thought she wanted to hear. He'd voiced opinions that he clearly wasn't sure would be well received rather than waiting to see what her position was before deciding on his own. She'd liked his artless conviction, and she just knew that it was going to carry him high into the political ranks, perhaps all the way to the top.

After that he'd been her right hand man. She'd encouraged him to have an opinion on everything and found, as she'd suspected, that he was a thoughtful, observant, insightful young man. She became used to her faithful shadow, and after the Attacks she truly didn't know what she would have done without him. Aside from continuing to do his job incredibly well having just lost his entire family, his mere presence bolstered her self-possession, kept reminding her that she had to be the one to find a way to keep everyone alive, including him. Especially him.

How could she have known that she was sending him to his death that night on Cloud Nine? She'd thought she'd been doing him a favour: he hadn't said it directly but she could tell by the crushed look on his face that his proposal to Petty Officer Dualla had gone badly, or at least, not the way he wanted. So she'd connived to have him get away from Colonial One for the evening, sent him in person to handle a trivial problem that could have been dealt with over the phone. If she'd only left him to pine alone in his own quarters, he'd still be here, not drifting out in the cold vacuum of space with a terrorist bullet through his heart…

She started at the sound of someone at her door. 'It's open,' she called, quickly wiping her eyes. Bill said he might pop by after the memorials.

'Am I interrupting?' he asked, hesitating upon seeing the idols and her position on the floor.

'No, no, come in,' she waved, pulling herself onto the sofa and indicating for him to do the same. 'How was your morning?' she asked, adding, 'No pun intended,' when he almost laughed. Almost.

'I'm glad it's over,' he said, relaxing back into the cushions and casting her a curious look, perhaps noticing her wet lashes. 'How'd yours go? I tried calling for you earlier.'

'Turns out I'm more popular than I thought.' The look on Bill's face reeked of 'I told you so's but she narrowed her eyes, daring him to say it out loud. He shook his head a little, looking away without comment.

His gaze fell instead on the photo of Billy she'd left on the floor and they both grew pensive, the sadness of the day washing over them anew. 'You miss him,' he said at last.

Her sigh was heavy with longing. 'All the time,' she admitted quietly.

Bill covered her hand with his own in empathy and she thought he must be thinking of his son, Zak. She laced her pale, smooth fingers through his dark gnarled ones and rested her temple against his shoulder. She didn't need to ask if it got easier, she already knew it wouldn't. This was the best comfort they could hope for; a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on, somebody who understood.

For once Laura allowed the silent tears to fall; for the Colonies, for Billy… and for Bill.

«®@»

Laura was not looking forward to dinner. She would have wriggled out of it if not for Bill's practically begging her not to leave him at the mercy of Ellen Tigh, especially after their last meeting; she still hadn't gotten them back for harbouring Saul and it was too much to hope for that she'd forgotten about it. She was the first to arrive, dressed in black to fit the occasion. Ellen, of course, observed no such drab dress-code and arrived in a lilac and purple patterned dress that showed off her curves to best advantage alongside Saul who, like the admiral, was wearing his dress uniform. Last to arrive were Doctor Cottle and Lee, the latter taking one look at Ellen and heading straight for the drinks cart: it seemed Laura and Bill were not the only ones anticipating a long night.

The aperitifs portion of the evening did not last long as Private Boyd arrived twenty minutes later, casting a nervous glance towards Laura as he manoeuvred the dinner cart over the threshold. Ellen, of course, missed nothing, least of all the opportunity to embarrass half the room's occupants with her observations. Bill barely concealed his sigh of dismay as she locked onto Boyd's half glances in Laura's direction as he unloaded the cart, though Laura was blissfully oblivious as she chatted with Cottle.

'Laura, do introduce us to your young admirer,' she said with a predatory grin. Boyd went from pink to crimson in three seconds flat as all eyes suddenly landed squarely on him. Laura was horrified to feel her own cheeks warming a little on his behalf as she realised it was true; how the hell had she missed that? Suddenly it all seemed blindingly obvious, no wonder Bill had been laughing his arse off all these weeks. She would have laughed, too, if she wasn't afraid of hurting the poor kid's feelings, sympathies which Lee, Saul and Cottle did not seem to share as they did little to conceal their amusement. 'Lucky girl,' said Ellen lasciviously.

Laura widened her eyes at Bill, hoping to convey that she held him entirely responsible for putting them both in this position. Why couldn't he have just reassigned Boyd when she frakking asked him to?

'Get out of here, kid,' he muttered out of the corner of his mouth, an order the private obeyed before it was fully given. Laura only wished she could vanish too.

'Well that was cruel,' said Laura once the hatch had closed behind him, casting a cold eye on Ellen.

'Oh don't be so uptight, I was just having a little fun,' said Ellen, looking completely unconcerned as she poured herself another drink, her third since arriving.

'Yes, I think we all know what your idea of a little fun is,' she said waspishly, her meaning all too clear.

The men in the room held their collective breath.

'This coming from a woman who likes to hide out in bathrooms with other people's husbands,' Ellen was quick to air.

Lee and Cottle's eyebrows shot up whilst Bill and Saul's shoulders slumped. This could get ugly.

Laura snorted. 'I can assure you I have absolutely zero interest in your husband,' she said, signing a zero with her hand.

Saul was too smart to be offended by this. Ellen on the other hand. 'Don't you look down your nose at us-'

'Ellen,' said Saul, recognising that tone and finally realising his intervention might be prudent.

'No! She thinks she's so much better than us just because she was president for five minutes. Well if you're so great, how come you were voted out the first chance people got? Huh? Answer that!'

The effort of not answering that made Laura squeeze her glass so hard it shattered.

'I'm supposed to have the night off, young lady,' said Cottle, still dangerously close to looking amused as Ellen sauntered off thinking she had won. He glanced at her hand. 'You alright?'

'Fine,' said Laura through gritted teeth, excusing herself to the bathroom to wash the glass off her hands.

Bill was quick to secure the seat next to his at the dinner table for Laura. 'Coward,' she muttered under her breath as he pulled her chair out for her, knowing it was only to avoid getting stuck next to Mrs Tigh. Funny how the little social conventions still existed, people automatically seating themselves to produce the best male to female ratio so that it was Lee, seated opposite Bill and looking like a trapped man, who drew the short straw. Cottle took a seat beside Laura, though he wasn't entirely safe either given what Laura suspected of Ellen's under-the-table antics.

Once they were all settled, Bill raised his glass, 'To the Twelve Colonies.'

'The Twelve Colonies,' his guests echoed, keeping their silence for a few moments after.

Dinner was a fairly civilised affair, for a while at least. 'So, how's the Pegasus treating you?' Laura asked Lee. It had been quite a while since last she'd seen him, not since the election in fact.

'Not bad,' he answered with a half-shrug. 'I'll be glad when we offload the civilians we took in after the Cloud Nine explosion.'

'Giving you trouble?' she asked with a knowing smile. These military types, they were so used to commanding men and women who were trained and bound to absolute obedience, but civilians weren't going to automatically do as they were told, they required convincing and a whole lot of patience. Bill had learned that the hard way when he declared martial law.

'It's the kids, they get everywhere, especially where they're not supposed to be. We had half the crew looking for a little girl last week. Turned out she'd been playing hide and seek and fell asleep in a trunk in the pilots rec room. She's lucky she didn't suffocate,' he said, looking slightly harassed.

'Only a few more weeks and they'll be out of your hair,' she reassured him. 'From what I hear, Canvas County's almost up and running.'

'Canvas County?' Bill queried.

'That's what they're calling the temporary site,' Laura elucidated.

'Speaking of which,' said Ellen, making Saul grumble and reach for his glass. 'What does a girl have to do to get off this ship?'

Bill's foot hit Laura's under the table. How had he known she was about to suggest an airlock?

'You're free to leave any time,' he said to Ellen, and probably sincerely meant it.

'And Saul?'

The admiral shook his head, 'I need my men here. If the cylons come back-'

'Oh the cylons aren't going to find us here,' she pooh-poohed. 'And besides, I'm sure you can spare one man.'

'It wouldn't be fair to the others.' Anyone else would have seen that it was futile trying to argue with him, he had no intention of debating the point, but Ellen was, well, Ellen.

'What's not fair is keeping them locked up here while everyone else gets to start a new life down on New Caprica.'

'Ellen,' said Saul reproachfully.

'What? I'm sure Laura's going to settle,' Laura almost spilled her drink but Ellen didn't wait for confirmation. 'I don't see why we shouldn't get the same chance.'

'Because someone has to guard the planet,' said Saul, obviously not for the first time.

'But the nebula-'

'Isn't going to stop a cylon fleet if they stick their heads in here. And besides,' Saul added repressively, 'I wouldn't go anyway.'

This couldn't have been news to Ellen but she looked put out nonetheless, perhaps hoping that if she could convince Bill, she could convince her husband.

Laura was glad when the conversation moved onto a safer topic, and gladder still when dinner was through and the Tighes were preparing to leave; Ellen had a way of making two hours feel more like two days.


End file.
